LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

University  of  California. 

Class 


<3Tfre  ifttoer?ibe  biographical  &erie£ 


i.     ANDREW  JACKSON,  by  W.  G.  Brown. 

2.  JAMES    B.    E ADS,  by  Louis  How. 

3.  BENJAMIN     FRANKLIN,  by    Paul    E. 

More. 

4.  PETER   COOPER,  by  R.  W.  Raymond. 

5.  THOMAS   JEFFERSON,  by  H.  C.  Mbr- 

WIN. 

6.  WILLIAM    PENN,  by  George  Hodges. 

7.  GENERAL  GRANT,  by  Walter  Allen. 

8.  LEWIS   AND    CLARK,  by  William  R. 

LlGHTON. 

9.  JOHN  MARSHALL, by JamesB. Thayer. 

10.  ALEXANDER   HAMILTON,  by  Chas.  A. 

CONANT. 

11.  WASHINGTON  IRVING,by  H.  W.  Boyn- 

TON. 

12.  PAUL  JONES,  by  Hutchins  Hapgood. 

13.  STEPHEN     A.     DOUGLAS,    by   W.    G. 

Brown. 

14.  SAMUEL   DE    CHAMPLAIN,  by  H.  D. 

Sedgwick,  Jr. 

15.  CHRISTOPHER  COLUMBUS,  by  Hor- 

ace E.  SCUDDER. 

Each  about  140  pages,  i6mo,  with  photogravure 
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HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  CO. 
Boston  and  New  York. 


Wfyt  Hitomfoe  Biographical  Series 

NUMBER  4 

PETER  COOPER 

BY 

ROSSITER  W.  RAYMOND 


PETER  COOPER 


BY 


ROSSITER  W.  RAYMOND 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 


g£ 


COPYRIGHT,   1 901,   BY   ROSSITER   W.   RAYMOND. 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

Preface  vii 

I.  Ancestry 1 

II.  Boyhood  and  Youth     ....  10 

III.  Business  Ventures 16 

IV.  Inventions 29 

V.  The  Tom  Thumb 38 

VI.  Municipal  Affairs         ....  52 
VII.  The  Cooper  Union  for  the  Advance- 
ment of  Science  and  Art  ...  64 
VIII.  National  Politics         .  96 
IX.  The  End 104 


227630 


PKEFACE 

During  the  last  decade  of  Peter  Cooper's 
life,  the  writer  of  this  biographical  sketch 
enjoyed  some  degree  of  intimacy  with  him, 
as  professional  adviser  and  traveling  com- 
panion, and  also,  incidentally,  as  consulting 
engineer  of  the  firm  of  Cooper  and  Hewitt, 
and  manager  of  a  department  in  the  Cooper 
Union.  This  circumstance,  together  with 
the  preference  kindly  expressed  by  Mr. 
Cooper's  family,  doubtless  influenced  the  se- 
lection of  the  writer  for  the  honorable  task 
of  preparing  this  book,  —  a  task  which  was 
welcome  as  a  labor  of  love,  though  the  exe- 
cution of  it  has  been  hindered  and  impaired 
by  the  demands  of  other  duties.  The  real 
difficulty  has  been  to  compress  within  the 
prescribed  limits  a  story  covering  so  many 
years  and  so  many  topics,  yet  not  possessing 
those  features  of  dramatic  action  or  adven- 
ture which  could  be  treated  briefly,  with 
picturesque  effect. 


viii  PREFACE 

Mr.  Cooper's  family  has  kindly  furnished 
abundant  material  for  this  work,  including, 
besides  his  own  published  utterances,  the 
notes  of  the  stenographer  to  whom  Mr. 
Cooper,  in  the  last  years  of  his  life,  dictated 
his  "  reminiscences."  The  use  which  has 
been  made  of  these  will  be  evident  to  the 
reader.  Beyond  an  occasional  revelation  of 
the  character  of  the  speaker,  or  a  side-light 
thrown  upon  the  manners  and  conditions  of 
our  early  national  life,  they  have  not  fur- 
nished valuable  data ;  and  the  study  of 
them  suggests  an  observation  which  may  be 
heeded  with  advantage  in  similar  cases  here- 
after, though  it  comes  too  late  to  be  useful  in 
this  instance,  namely,  that  the  recollections 
of  old  people  with  retentive  memories,  like 
Peter  Cooper,  may  be  invaluable,  if  they 
are  intelligently  aroused  and  guided ;  but  if 
the  speakers  (as  in  his  case)  are  left  to  their 
own  initiative,  they  are  too  likely  to  furnish 
superfluous  accounts  of  events  already  de- 
scribed more  accurately  in  authentic  contem- 
poraneous records. 

It  has  not  been  practicable  to  preserve, 


PREFACE  ix 

in  the  treatment  of  the  subject,  a  strictly 
chronological  order.  As  the  titles  of  the 
several  chapters  indicate,  the  different  lines 
of  Mr.  Cooper's  activity  have  been  consid- 
ered, to  some  extent,  separately,  so  that 
their  periods  overlap  each  other. 

This  sketch  of  Mr.  Cooper's  career  fur- 
nishes the  elements  of  an  analysis,  which  I 
introduce  here,  as  a  guide  in  the  interpreta- 
tion of  what  is  to  follow. 

1.  The  time  of  his  birth  and  the  pro- 
phetic anticipations  of  his  parents  pro- 
foundly influenced  his  ambition  to  do  some- 
thing great  for  his  fellow-citizens  of  the 
republic  whose  life  began  so  nearly  with 
his  own. 

2.  The  atmosphere  surrounding  his  youth 
was  one  of  unlimited  and  audacious  adven- 
ture. New  institutions,  a  virgin  continent, 
the  ardent  desire  to  be  independent  of  the 
Old  World,  and  a  profound  belief  in  the 
destiny  of  America,  all  combined  to  stimu- 
late endeavor.  What  Peter  Cooper  said  of 
himself  as  an  apprentice  was  true  of  the  typi- 
cal young  American  of  his  time :  "  I  was  al- 


x  PREFACE 

ways  planning  and  contriving,  and  was  never 
satisfied  unless  I  was  doing  something  diffi- 
cult —  something  that  had  never  been  done 
before,  if  possible." 

3.  The  new  freedom  and  the  vast  oppor- 
tunity presented  in  the  young  republic  en- 
couraged, to  a  degree  not  paralleled  before 
or  since,  that  change  of  occupation  which, 
with  all  its  drawbacks,  had  the  one  great 
merit  that  it  educated  men  to  various  activ- 
ities. It  was  no  disgrace  to  an  American 
to  go  into  one  business  after  another,  seek- 
ing the  one  which  would  prove  most  profit- 
able and  agreeable.     Thus,  Peter    Cooper 

i  worked  successively  as  a  hatter,  a  coach- 
builder,  a  machinist,  a  machine-maker,  a 
grocer,  an  iron-worker,  and  a  glue-manufac- 
turer, achieving  success  in  every  occupation, 
but  abandoning  each  for  something  more 
I  promising,  and  learning  in  each  something 
\  which  promoted  his  success  in  the  next. 

4.  At  every  stage  of  his  progress,  he  fol- 
lowed the  ideal  of  personal  independence, 
the  honest  acquisition  of  property,  the  es- 
tablishment of  a  home,  and  the  rearing  of  a 


PREFACE  xi 

family.  These  were  the  first  duties  and  the 
dearest  wishes  —  no  matter  what  greater 
things  might  lie  beyond.  And  he  pro- 
foundly realized  that  temperance,  industry, 
frugality,  and  patience  were  the  necessary 
preliminaries  to  any  longed-for  achievement. 
As  he  says,  he  had  first  to  spend  thirty 
years  in  getting  a  start ;  then  to  spend  an- 
other thirty  years  in  accumulating  the  means 
for  further  advance  into  the  wider  sphere  of 
his  aspirations.  And  during  each  stage  of 
this  process,  he  was  patient,  as  well  as  hope- 
ful, neither  wasting  his  energies  in  visionary 
schemes  nor  allowing  the  eddies  of  daily 
toil  to  divert  the  current  of  his  deeper  pur- 
poses. 

5.  At  every  stage,  however,  he  found 
himself  hindered  by  lack  of  thorough  know- 
ledge. He  invented  perpetually  and  pro- 
fusely ;  but  some  of  his  most  cherished  in- 
ventions did  not  find  practical  recognition, 
because  he  had  attempted  the  premature  or 
the  impossible.  His  guiding  principle,  of 
trying  to  do  something  that  had  never  been 
done  before,  is  not  an  adequate  substitute 


xii  PREFACE 

for  a  scientific  knowledge  of  what  can  be, 
and  now  needs  to  be,  done.  He  found  him- 
self often  too  far  in  advance  of  his  genera- 
tion. Moreover,  he  found  that  the  lack  of 
education  crippled  him  in  the  attempt  to 
make  other  men  understand  and  appreciate 
his  fruitful  ideas.  This  is  true  of  all  really 
great  "  self-made  men."  They  may  have 
achieved  success  and  fame  in  spite  of  early 
disadvantages ;  they  may,  perhaps,  recog- 
nize the  fact  that  such  disadvantages,  ne- 
cessitating a  stern  struggle,  have  sifted  out, 
by  natural  selection,  the  possessors  of  genius 
and  sterling  character  ;  but  not  one  of  them 
fails  to  lament  the  lack  of  that  early  training 
which  would  have  made  him  still  more  suc- 
cessful than  he  is;  and  not  one  of  them 
fails  to  desire,  for  his  children  and  the  com- 
ing generation  of  his  fellows,  the  early  advan- 
tages which  were  denied  to  himself. 

8.  This  experience  it  was  which  gave 
form  to  the  aspirations  and  purposes  of 
Peter  Cooper.  As  an  apprentice,  he  re- 
solved to  do  something  for  the  benefit  of 
apprentices  —  to     found     some    institution 


PREFACE  xiii 

which  should  supplement  the  deficiencies  of 
early  education,  furnishing  to  virtuous,  in- 
dustrious, and  ambitious  youths  the  means 
of  progress,  and  attracting  the  thoughtless 
or  indolent  into  the  same  ascending  road. 
How  this  conception  came  to  be  both  modi- 
fied and  realized  will  be  seen  in  later  pages. 
At  this  point  it  is  sufficient  to  note  that 
the  plan  was  originally  not  only  philanthro- 
pic, but  patriotic  and  practical.  It  contem- 
plated the  benefit,  through  means  adapted 
to  their  special  condition,  of  Americans  of 
that  class  to  which  Peter  Cooper  himself  be- 
longed. 

Some  further  observations  concerning  the 
secret  of  the  universal  esteem  and  affection 
enjoyed  by  Mr.  Cooper  will  be  reserved  for 
the  closing  chapter. 


PETER  COOPER 


ANCESTRY 


Obadiah  Cooper,  who,  with  his  two 
brothers,  came  from  England  to  the  colony 
of  New  York  about  1662,  belonged,  as  we 
may  infer  with  confidence,  to  that  sturdy 
class  of  republican  yeomanry  which  found 
the  restored  reign  of  the  Stuarts  intolerable. 
He  settled  at  Fishkill-on-the-Hudson ;  and 
his  son  Obadiah  —  whom  tradition  declares 
to  have  been  the  fourth  white  man  child 
born  in  what  is  now  Dutchess  County — was 
the  great-grandfather  of  Peter  Cooper.  In 
1720  an  Obadiah  of  the  next  generation 
followed,  and  of  his  son  John,  born  in  1755, 
Peter  Cooper  was  the  fifth  child. 

John  Cooper  came  of  age  in  the  year  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence.     In  the 


2  PETER  COOPER 

issue  between  the  British  government  and 
the  American  colonies  his  choice  could  not 
be  doubtful.  He  followed  the  traditions  of 
his  family.  Indeed,  it  is  now  well  estab- 
lished and  universally  admitted  that  the 
patriots  of  the  American  Revolution  were 
not  in  fact  arrayed  against  England.  They 
were  engaged  in  a  struggle  which  was  but  a 
part  of  the  great  conflict  waged  against  short- 
sighted and  obstinate  tyranny  by  English- 
men on  both  sides  of  the  ocean,  and  in  which 
the  victory  for  liberty  was  won  on  this 
side  sooner  than  on  the  other.  What  the 
Coopers  and  their  kind  achieved  here  was 
applauded  openly  in  the  mother  country  by 
the  descendants  of  a  common  ancestry  as  a 
triumph  for  the  common  cause.  The  use  of 
foreign  mercenaries  under  British  command- 
ers in  this  country  was  the  direct  result  of 
the  impossibility  of  inducing  Englishmen  to 
enlist  for  service  against  their  American 
kinsmen.  Hence  when  John  Cooper,  of 
Fishkill,  abandoned  in  1776  the  business  he 
had  just  established  as  a  hatter,  and  became 
sergeant  in  a  company  of  "  minute-men,"  he 


ANCESTRY  3 

was  but  pursuing  the  course  indicated  both 
by  his  own  convictions  and  by  the  history  of 
his  fathers  and  the  sympathies  of  the  party 
in  England  to  which  they  had  belonged.  It 
was  Freedom's  battle  "  handed  down  from 
sire  to  son." 

He  served  subsequently  for  two  years  in 
the  Continental  line,  and  for  the  last  four 
years  of  the  war  as  a  lieutenant  in  the 
New  York  militia,  actively  employed  in  the 
perilous  service  of  protecting  life,  property, 
and  the  public  stores  in  the  zone  of  de- 
batable territory,  —  the  "  bloody  ground  " 
which  surrounded  the  British  lines  in  New 
York.  At  the  close  of  the  war,  New  York 
having  been  evacuated  by  the  enemy,  Lieu- 
tenant John  Cooper  retired  to  civil  life,  and 
resumed  business  as  a  hatter  in  that  city,  — 
a  worthy  example  of  that  American  citizen 
soldiery  which  has  always  been  equally  ready 
to  leave  the  ways  of  peace  for  its  country's 
defense,  and  to  return  to  them  when  the 
exigency  had  passed. 

It  was  in  1779,  during  his  military  ser- 
vice, that  John  Cooper  married  Margaret,  the 


4  PETER  COOPER 

daughter  of  John  Campbell,  a  deputy  quarter- 
master-general in  the  Continental  army,  and  a 
trusted  agent  of  Washington.  The  outbreak 
of  hostilities  in  1776  had  found  John  Camp- 
bell a  prosperous  merchant  and  owner  of 
real  estate  in  New  York  city.  He  at  once 
lent  to  the  Revolutionary  government  eleven 
hundred  guineas,  —  the  whole  of  his  ready 
money,  —  entered  the  service,  was  made 
deputy  quartermaster-general,  and  was  di- 
rected to  superintend  the  hasty  evacuation 
of  the  city  by  the  Whig  inhabitants,  and  to 
protect  them  and  their  property  as  far  as 
possible.  Lingering  too  long  to  assist  some 
of  the  laggards,  he  was  captured  by  the  forces 
landed  from  the  British  fleet,  but  was  subse- 
quently released ;  and  he  made  a  temporary 
home  at  Fishkill  while  actively  engaged  in 
establishing  the  lines  by  which  the  British 
army,  though  holding  the  city  and  command- 
ing its  access  to  the  sea,  was  practically  be- 
sieged. General  Campbell  served  through- 
out the  war,  and  after  hostilities  had  ceased 
commanded  the  troops  at  West  Point  until 
they  were  finally  disbanded  in  1785. 


ANCESTRY  5 

It  is  easy  to  imagine  how  the  young  lieu- 
tenant and  the  daughter  of  the  commander 
who  must  have  been  frequently  brought  into 
personal  relations  with  him  may  have  met 
and  loved  and  wedded  in  the  midst  of  those 
troublous  times,  but  the  romance  would  have 
no  special  bearing  on  this  history.  It  is 
enough  to  say  that  by  this  marriage  the  best 
blood  of  England  and  Scotland  —  of  ser- 
vants of  God  and  lovers  of  freedom  —  was 
blended  in  the  nine  children,  seven  sons 
and  two  daughters,  of  which  Peter  Cooper 
—  born  February  12,  1791,  in  Little  Dock 
(now  Water)  Street,  New  York  —  was  the 
fifth. 

John  Cooper  was  not  characteristically  a 
seer  of  visions  or  a  dreamer  of  dreams.  On 
the  contrary,  the  accounts  of  him  which 
have  come  down  to  us  describe  him  as  a 
stalwart  athlete,  who  "  could  lift  a  barrel 
of  cider  from  the  ground  and  put  it  in  a 
wagon,"  and  who  once,  being  cornered  and 
attacked  by  a  bull,  seized  the  animal's  nose 
with  one  hand  and  so  battered  its  head  with 
a  stone  that  it  was  glad  to  turn  and  fly. 


6  PETER  COOPER 

Yet  he  came  of  a  race  that  believed  in  Di- 
vine guidance ;  and  on  one  occasion  at  least 
he  acted  upon  that  belief  in  a  matter  then 
deemed  more  important,  perhaps,  than  now. 
The  incident  can  be  given  best  in  the  words 
of  Peter  Cooper  himself,  who  wrote  :  — 

"  My  father  used  to  tell  me  how  he  came 
to  call  me  Peter.  When  I  was  born  he  be- 
came strongly  impressed  with  the  idea  that 
I  would  some  day  have  more  than  ordinary 
fame,  and  what  name  he  should  give  me  was 
a  matter  of  serious  and  frequent  thought. 
While  walking  on  Broadway  one  dark  night 
it  seemed  as  though  a  voice  spoke  to  him  in 
a  clear  and  distinct  manner :  '  Call  him 
Peter ! '  That  seeming  voice  settled  my 
name.  My  father  said  that  he  felt  that  I 
was  to  be  of  great  good  in  some  way ;  and 
his  remarks,  with  my  mother's,  concerning 
their  aspirations  and  hopes  for  me  acted  as  a 
stimulus  and  made  me  anxious  to  fulfill  their 
wishes,  and  not  disappoint  them." 

If  names  were  to  be  characteristic  of  indi- 
vidual careers,  it  might  be  better  to  imitate 
some   Indian  tribes,  and  to   give  the  per- 


ANCESTRY  7 

manent  name  only  after  the  career,  or  at 
least  the  character,  of  its  recipient  had  been 
indicated  by  his  acts.  In  this  instance  the 
subsequent  life  of  the  son  did  not  in  any 
peculiar  way  imitate  that  of  the  Apostle 
Peter.  Evidently  not  that  particular  name, 
but  the  simple  fact  that  an  eminent  name, 
thus  suggested  and  not  already  familiar  in  his 
family,  had  been  given  to  him,  produced 
upon  his  mind  the  effect  to  which  he  testi- 
fies. 

But  why  should  practical  John  Cooper 
be  disposed  to  anticipate  a  special  distinc- 
tion for  the  infant  who  was  the  fifth  of  his 
numerous  progeny?  From  the  standpoint 
of  the  modes  of  thought  of  the  godly  patriots 
of  that  generation,  and  of  their  ancestors, 
the  English  Puritans  and  the  Scotch  Cove- 
nanters, it  is  scarcely  hazardous  to  assume 
that  current  public  affairs  largely  affected 
such  domestic  choices.  Peter  Cooper's  birth 
was  practically  simultaneous  with  the  launch- 
ing of  that  Ship  of  State,  the  "  Union,  strong 
and  great,"  in  which  all  patriots  had  em- 
barked "  their  hopes,  triumphant  o'er  their 


8  PETER  COOPER 

fears."  To  his  veteran-soldier  father  he 
was  the  first  child  of  the  new  era ;  and  the 
dreams  that  were  dreamed  over  him  were 
doubtless  connected  with  that  glorious  future 
which  had  just  dawned  upon  the  federated 
republic.  The  choice  of  an  unfamiliar,  non- 
hereditary  name,  however  suggested,  sym- 
bolized the  break  between  the  old  time  and 
the  new. 

Above  all,  this  incident  produced  in  the 
son  thus  christened  the  profoundest  effects, 
the  deepest  motives,  that  can  inspire  a  boy- 
ish soul,  —  the  belief  in  a  beneficent  mission, 
the  yearning  to  discover  it,  the  resolve  to 
execute  it,  and  the  conviction  that  it  was  to 
be  directly  connected  with  the  prosperity 
and  progress  of  the  great  nation,  the  life  of 
which  began  with  his  own. 

The  naming  of  Peter  Cooper  thus  strikes 
the  keynote,  or,  more  accurately,  the  triple 
chord,  of  his  life.  For  he  was  first  of  all  an 
American,  keenly  aware  of  the  opportunities 
offered  by  the  free  institutions  of  his  coun- 
try to  individual  ambition,  industry,  and 
genius,  and  of  his  own  personal  ability  to 


ANCESTRY  9 

make  use  of  these  opportunities.  Secondly, 
he  was  a  lover  of  his  fellow  men,  deter- 
mined to  employ  for  their  benefit  the  means 
and  powers  which  he  felt  himself  able  to 
accumulate  by  thought,  toil,  and  frugal  econ- 
omy. Thirdly,  he  was  even  in  his  philan- 
thropy essentially  still  an  American,  intent 
most  of  all  upon  the  welfare  of  those  classes 
of  his  countrymen  with  whose  struggles  and 
needs  his  own  early  life  had  made  him  famil- 
iar. In  other  words,  while  his  philanthropy 
covered  a  world-wide  range,  his  peculiar  mis- 
sion, as  he  conceived  it,  was  indissolubly  blent 
with  the  success  of  the  republic  of  which  he 
was  one  of  the  earliest-born  sons. 


II 

BOYHOOD   AND   YOUTH 

At  a  meeting  of  friends,  gathered  Febru- 
ary 12, 1882,  to  celebrate  his  ninety-first  birth- 
day anniversary,  Mr.  Cooper,  after  express- 
ing his  thanks  for  their  congratulatory  good 
wishes,  and  observing  that  in  his  case  "  length 
of  days  had  not  yet  resulted  in  weariness  of 
spirit,"  added  this  review  of  his  life  :  — 

"  Looking  back,  I  can  see  that  my  career 
has  been  divided  into  three  eras.  During 
the  first  thirty  years  I  was  engaged  in  get- 
ting a  start  in  life ;  during  the  second  thirty 
years  I  was  occupied  in  getting  means  for 
carrying  out  the  modest  plan  which  I  had 
long  formed  for  the  benefit  of  my  fellow 
men ;  and  during  the  last  thirty  years  I  have 
devoted  myself  to  the  execution  of  these 
plans.     This  work  is  now  done." 

Accepting  this  division  of  his  career,  as 
convenient,    though    not    strictly   accurate 


BOYHOOD  AND  YOUTH  11 

(since  the  processes  described  really  over- 
lapped instead  of  separately  succeeding  one 
another),  we  may  consider  first  Mr.  Cooper's 
means  and  method  of  achieving  personal 
success ;  and  in  this  survey  the  conditions  of 
his  boyhood  and  early  youth  are  primarily 
important. 

While  he  was  still  very  young,  the  family 
removed  from  a  temporary  residence  of  three 
years  in  New  York  city  to  Peekskill,  where 
he  remained  until,  at  the  age  of  seventeen, 
he  returned  to  New  York  as  an  apprentice, 
to  be,  thenceforward,  dependent  upon  his 
own  exertions  for  a  living. 

The  intervening  period  was  spent  in  ways 
characteristic  of  the  period  and  of  the  indi- 
vidual. He  attended  school  for  three  or 
four  "  quarters,"  of  which  period,  according 
to  his  later  recollection,  "  probably  half  was 
occupied  by  '  half-day '  school."  Outside  of 
this  scanty  formal  instruction,  there  is 
ample  evidence  that  he  developed  body  and 
mind  in  varied  work  and  play.  He  bore  to 
the  end  of  life  the  scars  of  youthful  esca- 
pades, witnessing  the  adventurous  spirit  of 


12  PETER  COOPER 

his  boyhood.  When  only  four  years  old, 
he  climbed  about  the  framework  of  a  new 
house,  and  fell,  head  downward,  upon  an 
iron  kettle,  cutting  his  forehead  to  the  bone. 
Later  on,  he  was  accidentally  cut  with  a  knife 
in  the  hands  of  a  playmate.  Later  still,  he 
cut  himself  dangerously  with  an  axe.  Again, 
he  fell  from  a  high  tree,  holding  an  iron 
hook  with  which  he  had  been  reaching  for 
cherry-bearing  branches,  and  managed  to 
hook  out  one  of  his  teeth.  At  another  time 
he  went  for  the  nest  of  a  hanging-bird,  and 
had  the  fact  that  it  was  a  hornet's  nest  in- 
delibly impressed  on  his  memory.  Of  course, 
he  was  nearly  drowned  three  times,  —  such 
youngsters  always  have  such  escapes.  In 
short,  he  was  a  thorough  boy,  adventuring 
all  things,  daunted  by  nothing,  and  pro- 
tected from  the  results  of  his  reckless  en- 
deavors by  that  Providence  which  watches 
over  small  boys. 

But  such  a  temperament  finds  play  in 
useful  work  also.  The  boy  learned  every 
department  of  the  hat-making  business,  be- 
ginning, when  he  was  very  young,  with  pull- 


BOYHOOD  AND  YOUTH  13 

ing  the  fur  from  the  skins  of  rabbits.  And, 
while  assisting  his  mother  in  doing  the 
family  washing,  he  made  what  was,  perhaps, 
his  first  invention,  —  a  mechanical  arrange- 
ment for  pounding  the  soiled  linen.  Again, 
after  carefully  dissecting  an  old  shoe,  to  learn 
how  it  was  put  together,  he  determined  to 
make  shoes  and  slippers  for  the  family,  and 
succeeded  in  turning  out  products  of  manu- 
facture which  were  said  to  be  as  good  as 
those  to  be  found,  at  that  day,  in  the  regular 
trade. 

He  constructed  a  toy  wagon,  sold  it  for 
six  dollars,  managed  to  gather  four  dollars 
more,  invested  the  ten  dollars  in  lottery 
tickets,  and  drew  only  blanks,  of  which  expe- 
rience he  said  many  years  later,  "  I  consider 
it  one  of  the  best  investments  of  my  life ;  for 
I  then  learned  that  it  was  not  my  forte  to 
make  money  at  games  of  chance." 

When  he  was  between  thirteen  and  four- 
teen years  old,  his  father  built  a  large  malt- 
house  at  Newburg,  and  the  son  loaded  with 
his  own  hands  and  carted  to  the  site  selected 
all  the  stone  for  the  building.     Collecting 


14  PETER  COOPER 

wild  honey  and  shooting  game  in  the  forests 
around  Peekskill  were  additional  employ- 
ments which  combined  pleasure  with  profit. 
But  this  life  did  not  satisfy  the  ambition  of 
the  youth;  and  in  1808,  at  the  age  of  seven- 
teen, he  left  the  paternal  roof  and  appren- 
ticed himself  for  four  years  to  John  Wood- 
ward, a  leading  coach-builder  in  New  York, 
whose  shop  was  located  on  the  corner  of 
Broadway  and  Chambers  Street,  then  the 
northerly  edge  of  the  city,  opposite  a  vege- 
table garden,  the  remnants  of  which,  after 
the  occupation  of  a  large  portion  by  city, 
county,  and  national  buildings,  now  consti- 
tute the  City  Hall  Park.  The  terms  of  his 
employment  were  his  board  and  a  salary  of 
twenty-five  dollars  a  year,  —  out  of  which  he 
managed  not  only  to  pay  all  obligations,  but 
also  to  lay  by  a  little  money.  During  this 
period  he  not  only  mastered  the  details  of 
the  trade,  but  learned  in  his  hours  of  leisure 
other  branches,  such  as  ornamental  wood- 
carving,  and  made  several  inventions,  one  of 
which  was  a  machine  for  mortising  hubs,  — 
an  operation  performed  by  hand  up  to  that 


BOYHOOD  AND  YOUTH  15 

time.  Another  invention  over  which  the 
young  apprentice  dreamed,  and  of  which  he 
laboriously  constructed  a  model,  was  an  ap- 
paratus for  utilizing,  in  the  running  of  ma- 
chinery, the  swift  current  of  the  tide  in  the  , 
East  River. 


\ 


Ill 

BUSINESS   VENTURES 

At  the  end  of  his  apprenticeship,  his  em- 
ployer offered  to  set  him  up  in  business  as 
a  coach-builder,  lending  him  the  necessary 
capital.  Many  years  later,  Mr.  Cooper  told 
the  story  thus  :  — 

"  I  was  about  to  accept  his  generous  offer, 
when  an  incident  occurred  which  changed 
my  decision.  Mr.  Woodward  had  just  com- 
pleted one  of  the  finest  coaches  ever  built  in 
New  York,  for  a  gentleman  who  was  sup- 
posed to  be  one  of  the  richest  men  in  the 
city.  But  a  day  or  two  before  the  coach 
was  to  be  delivered  the  gentleman  died,  and 
it  was  then  found,  that  he  was  insolvent. 
This  made  me  hesitate.  If  I  should  accept 
my  employer's  kind  offer  and  have  such  a 
misfortune  happen  to  me  in  the  sale  of  an 
elegant  and  expensive  coach,  I  should  con- 
sider myself  a  slave  for  life,  since  the  law  of 


BUSINESS  VENTURES  17 

imprisonment  for  debt  had  not  then  been 
abolished.  So  I  changed  my  plans,  and 
went  to  Hempstead,  Long  Island,  to  visit  my 
brother." 

The  visit  to  Hempstead  became  a  pro- 
longed residence.  He  obtained  work  at 
$1.50  a  day  (then  regarded  as  high  wages) 
in  a  factory  making  machines  for  shearing 
cloth,  and  after  nearly  three  years  had 
saved  enough  money  to  purchase  the  right 
for  the  State  of  New  York  to  a  patented 
machine  for  that  purpose.  He  used  to  tell, 
in  his  old  age,  of  his  elation  when  he  effected 
his  first  sale  of  a  county-right,  for  which  he 
received  five  hundred  dollars  from  Mr.  Vas- 
sar,  of  Poughkeepsie,  afterwards  the  founder 
of  Vassar  College. 

The  manufacture  and  sale  of  the  new 
shearing-machine,  into  which  Mr.  Cooper 
introduced  many  additional  improvements, 
was  a  prosperous  business,  especially  during 
the  war  of  1812,  when  domestic  woolen 
goods  were  in  great  demand.  He  married, 
December  18,  1813,  Sarah  Bedell,  a  lady  of 
Huguenot  descent,  who  made  for  him  a  happy 


18  PETER  COOPER 

home  during  fifty-seven  years.1  He  bought 
a  house  in  Hempstead,  expecting  to  remain 
there  ;  and  in  the  household,  as  in  business, 
he  gave  rein  to  his  ardent  and  versatile  in- 
ventive faculty.  One  of  his  domestic  con- 
trivances rocked  the  cradle,  fanned  away 
the  flies,  and  played  a  lullaby  to  the  baby. 
He  sold  the  patent  in  Connecticut  to  a 
Yankee  peddler  for  a  horse  and  wagon,  and 
the  peddler's  stock,  including  a  hurdy-gurdy. 
Another  invention  was  a  machine  for  mow- 
ing grass,  constructed  on  the  principle  of  his 
cloth-shearing  machine. 

But  after  the  war,  the  domestic  woolen 
mills  were  shut  down,  and  there  was  no  sale 

V 

1  Many  years  after  his  wife's  death,  arid  shortly  before 
his  own,  Mr.  Cooper  dictated  the  following  passage,  which 
is  almost  the  last  in  his  Reminiscences  :  — 

"  Not  only  do  I  think  of  my  wife  during  my  waking 
moments ;  she  often  comes  to  me  in  my  dreams,  some- 
times once  a  week,  sometimes  once  in  two  weeks,  and 
sometimes  at  longer  intervals.  It  is  one  of  the  greatest 
pleasures  of  my  life  that  I  can  believe  that  she  has  been, 
and  is  now,  my  guardian  angel,  and  it  is  one  of  my  hap- 
piest hopes  that  I  shall  see  that  this  our  world  is  but 
the  bud  of  a  being  that  is  to  ripen  and  bear  its  choicest 
fruits  in  another  and  a  better." 


BUSINESS  VENTURES  19 

for  Mr.  Cooper's  machines.  So  lie  first 
turned  his  factory  into  a  furniture  shop,  and 
then,  selling  it  for  what  he  could  get,  he 
moved  to  New  York,  and  started  in  the 
grocery  business,  buying  for  this  purpose  a 
long  lease  of  the  ground  where  the  Bible 
House  now  stands,  opposite  the  Cooper 
Union  on  Ninth  Street.  Upon  this  ground 
he  erected  several  buildings,  one  of  which 
he  used  as  his  office.  The  business  was 
profitable ;  but  the  real  foundation  of  Mr. 
Cooper's  wealth  was  laid  when,  at  the  age 
of  thirty-three,  he  purchased  a  glue  factory, 
situated  where  the  Park  Avenue  Hotel  now 
stands,  and  established  himself  as  a  glue 
manufacturer.*  The  business  speedily  ac- 
quired and  Held  for  half  a  century  practi- 
cally the  whole  trade  of  the  country  in  glue 
and  isinglass,  —  a  monopoly  fairly  earned  by 
the  cheapness  and  excellence  of  its  product. 
Mr.  Cooper's  inventions  improved  the 
quality  and  reduced  the  cost  of  his  product, 
while  his  energy,  industry,  and  frugality 
steadily  increased  his  surplus  cash,  and  en- 
abled  him,    without    borrowing   capital,  to 


20  PETER  COOPER 

extend  his  sphere  of  operations.  For  many 
years,  he  carried  on  his  glue  business  with- 
out bookkeeper,  agent,  or  salesman.  Dawn 
found  him  at  the  suburban  factory  (on  what  is 
now  Thirty-Second  Street)  lighting  the  fires 
and  preparing  for  the  day's  work  ;  at  noon, 
he  drove  in  his  buggy  to  the  city,  where  he 
made  his  own  sales  and  purchases  ;  and  all 
his  evenings  he  spent  at  home,  making  up 
his  accounts,  answering  his  correspondents, 
studying  out  new  inventions,  or  talking  and 
reading  to  his  wife  and  children. 

By  these  simple,  old-fashioned  methods  he 
built  up  a  business  and  accumulated  a  fortune 
too  large  to  be  thus  administered.  It  would 
have  been  impossible  for  one  head  to  carry  the 
details  of  work  and  management,  for  one  pair 
of  eyes  to  superintend  each  part  of  the  work, 
or  for  one  pair  of  feet,  however  tireless,  to 
travel  all  the  ways  which  lead  to  and  from  a 
great  modern  industrial  establishment.  Still 
less  could  financial  direction  and  protection  be 
compassed  by  the  simple  scheme  which  Mr. 
Cooper,  in  his  old  age,  recalled  with  pride. 
"  I  used,"  he   said   once,  "  to   pay  all  my 


BUSINESS  VENTURES  21 

debts  every  Saturday  night ;  and  I  knew 
that  what  I  had  left  was  my  own !  "  This 
could  not  have  been  strictly  true  ;  but  it 
doubtless  expressed  an  old  man's  memory  of 
the  way  he  began,  and  the  principles  he  had 
followed,  with  that  horror  of  debt  which 
dated  from  the  time  when  debtors  could  be 
put  in  jail.  Fortunately  for  Mr.  Cooper,  his 
son  Edward,  and  his  son-in-law,  Abram  S. 
Hewitt,  were  at  hand  to  undertake  the  man- 
agement of  his  business  enterprises  at  the 
time  when  his  own  simple  methods  would 
have  proved  inadequate,  so  that  his  inven- 
tive genius,  adventurous  courage,  and,  above 
all,  intense  philanthropy,  were  backed  with 
ample  means. 

In  this  account  of  his  business  ventures 
(though  of  much  later  date  than  those  al- 
ready mentioned)  the  part  played  by  Peter 
Cooper  in  the  development  of  the  American 
iron  industry  and  in  the  construction  of  the 
first  transatlantic  submarine  telegraph  may 
be  recorded. 

The  manufacture  of  iron  was  one  of  the 
early  industries  of  the  American  colonies, 


22  PETER  COOPER 

and  after  the  Revolution  it  was  prosecuted 
with  increased  activity  in  small  and  primi- 
tive establishments.  With  its  development 
into  scientific  forms  on  a  large  scale  Mr. 
Cooper  was  both  directly  and  indirectly  con- 
nected. His  Ringwood  estate  in  New  Jersey 
had  been  the  scene  of  the  operations  of  the 
Ringwood  Company  in  1740,  and  of  its  suc- 
cessors,—  Hasenclever  (1764)  and  Erskine 
(1771)  ;  and  the  Durham  furnace,  on  the 
Delaware  River  in  Pennsylvania  (on  the  site 
of  the  Durham  Iron  Works  of  Cooper  & 
Hewitt),  made  its  first  blast  in  1727.  Mr. 
Cooper  himself  was  engaged  in  1830  in  the 
manufacture  of  charcoal 'iron  near  Baltimore, 
and  in  1836,  together  with  his  brother 
Thomas,  he  operated  a  rolling-mill  in  New 
York  (on  Thirty-Third  Street,  near  Third 
Avenue).  At  this  mill  anthracite  was  used 
for  puddling  in  1840.  In  1845  the  busi- 
ness was  removed  to  Trenton,  N.  J.  ;  and  in 
the  new  rolling-mill  —  then  the  largest  in 
the  United  States  —  built  at  Trenton  for 
the  manufacture  of  rails,  the  first  iron  beams 
for  buildings  were  rolled  in  1854.     By  the 


BUSINESS  VENTURES  23 

erection  of  blast  furnaces  at  Phillipsburg 
and  Kingwood,  N.  J.,  and  Durham,  Pa.,  and 
the  addition  of  wire  mills,  bridge  shop,  chain 
shop,  etc.,  to  the  works  at  Trenton,  the  pur- 
chase of  iron  and  coal  lands,  and  the  develop- 
ment of  numerous  mines,  the  firm  of  Cooper 
&  Hewitt  achieved  high  rank  among  the 
ironmasters  of  America ;  and  the  Iron  and 
Steel  Institute  of  Great  Britain  conferred 
upon  Peter  Cooper  in  1879  the  "  Bessemer 
gold  medal "  for  his  services  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  American  iron  trade.  In  1890 
the  same  honor  was  given  to  Mr.  Abram  S. 
Hewitt  in  recognition  of  the  experiments  at 
Phillipsburg  as  early  as  1856  to  test  the 
new  invention  of  Bessemer,  of  his  introduc- 
tion of  the  open-hearth  steel  process  into  the 
United  States,  and  of  other  services  rendered 
to  the  steel  industry,  —  in  all  of  which  he 
may  be  said  to  have  followed,  with  the  ad- 
vantages of  a  wider  culture  and  ampler 
means,  the  example  set  by  Mr.  Cooper. 

One  of  the  boldest  yet  wisest  and  most 
profitable  operations  of  Mr.  Cooper  was  his 
investment  in  the  Atlantic  cable  enterprise 


24  PETER  COOPER 

of  Cyrus  Field.  He  was  already  past  mid- 
dle age  when  this  audacious  scheme  began 
to  be  dreamed  of.  In  1842  Morse  had  laid 
'down  an  experimental  cable  from  Castle 
Garden  to  Governor's  Island  in  New  York 
harbor,  and  claimed  as  a  practical  inference 
that  a  telegraphic  communication  on  his 
plan  could  "  with  certainty  be  established 
across  the  Atlantic." *  In  1851  the  first 
cable  was  laid  between  France  and  England, 
and  others  rapidly  followed  on  ocean  lines 
over  short  distances.  The  principle  was 
thus  established,  and  the  doubts  as  to  its 
practical  application  to  a  line  of  at  least 
twenty-five  hundred  miles  were  of  such  a 
character  as  to  seem  more  serious  to  scien- 
tific men  than  to  American  capitalists  of  Mr. 
Cooper's  type.  In  March,  1854,  |he  New 
York,  Newfoundland,  &  London  Telegraph 
Company  was  organized,  and  Mr.  Cooper 
became  (and  remained  for  twenty  trying 
years)  its  president.  There  was  little  diffi- 
culty in  raising  the  money  for  the  eighty- 

1  Letter  of  Morse  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  in 
the  autumn  of  1843. 


BUSINESS  VENTURES  25 

five  miles  of  cable  which  were  to  be  laid 
under  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence,  or  in  ob- 
taining from  the  British  colonies  favorable 
charters  granting  exclusive  privileges,  land 
grants,  and  even  subsidies.  Yet  the  con- 
struction of  the  land  line  across  Newfound- 
land to  the  terminus  at  Heart's  Content 
proved  difficult  and  costly,  and  the  St.  Law- 
rence cable  was  lost  in  laying.  Yet  addi- 
tional capital  was  subscribed ;  and  a  couple 
of  years  later  the  Newfoundland  line,  the 
St.  Lawrence  cable,  and  another  submarine 
link  of  thirteen  miles  across  the  Straits  of 
Northumberland  had  been  successfully  fin- 
ished. Nothing  remained  to  be  done  except 
the  procuring  of  means  and  the  devising  of 
successful  methods  for  the  installation  of  the 
Atlantic  cable  itself,  without  which  all  this 
preliminary  expenditure  would  have  been 
thrown  away. 

The  capital  estimated  as  necessary  for 
making  and  laying  the  cable  was  raised  by 
Mr.  Field  in  ^England,  where  the  Atlantic 
Telegraph  Company  was  formed  to  construct 
and  operate  the  line  under  concessions  from 


'., 


26  PETER  COOPER 

the  parent  Newfoundland  company.  All 
classes  in  England  felt  a  sentimental  in- 
terest in  the  romantic  enterprise ;  and  the 
subscribers  to  the  new  stock  included  such 
men  as  Thackeray  and  others  of  equal  note, 
outside  of  business  circles  altogether. 

The  company  proceeded  with  vigor,  —  se- 
cured from  the  governments  of  Great  Brit- 
ain and  the  United  States  guaranties  of 
subsidies  and  the  free  use  of  ships  for  laying 
the  cable  ;  contracts  for  the  cable  and  its  in- 
sulating covering  were  executed ;  and  by  the 
end  of  July,  1857,  the  British  Agamemnon 
and  the  American  Niagara  had  each  twelve 
hundred  and  fifty  miles  of  it  on  board. 
In  August  they  connected  the  two  halves  of 
it  in  mid-Atlantic,  and  in  September  the 
shore  end  was  landed  at  Heart's  Content. 

The  sequel  is  familiar  history.  A  few 
messages  had  been  sent  and  received,  when 
the  current  grew  weaker  and  weaker,  and  at 
last  failed  entirely.  The  result  was  a  strong 
reaction  in  popular  sentiment.  It  was  even 
questioned  whether  any  messages  had  actually 
crossed  the  Atlantic.     Fortunately  this  doubt 


BUSINESS  VENTURES  27 

could  be  conclusively  disproved,  —  especially 
in  England,  where  it  was  known  that  the 
British  government  had  wired  by  the  cable 
before  its  failure  news  of  great  political  im- 
portance. The  British  company  indeed  cour- 
ageously proceeded  to  make  another  cable  ; 
but  when  this  parted  in  mid-ocean  during 
the  process  of  laying  it  even  British  tenacity 
of  purpose  was  daunted,  and  for  some  two 
years  the  enterprise  seemed  to  be  dead. 
Meanwhile  public  opinion  on  this  side  was 
far  more  unfavorable,  and  the  parent  com- 
pany found  itself  without  means  or  credit. 
To  retain  its  privileges  it  must  pay  addi- 
tional money,  and  to  make  those  privileges 
worth  anything  capital  must  be  raised  for 
a  third  attempt  to  lay  the  transatlantic 
line. 

Without  describing  in  detail  the  difficul- 
ties and  anxieties  of  this  period,  it  may  be 
said  that  the  intelligent  courage  of  Peter 
Cooper  saved  the  enterprise,  while  it  secured 
to  him  a  large  pecuniary  reward;  for  he 
perceived  that  the  real  problem  had  been 
solved  by  the  first  apparent  failure ;  that 


28  PETER  COOPER 

the  failure  of  a  cable  in  use  or  the  loss  of  a 
cable  in  laying  it  were  mere  incidental  mis- 
fortunes which  more  thorough  precautions 
and  better  luck  would  preclude ;  and  he 
backed  with  his  own  faith  and  money  the 
undaunted  enthusiasm  and  persuasive  elo- 
quence of  Mr.  Field,  whose  expenses  he  paid 
for  another  journey  to  England,  and  who 
succeeded  at  last  in  raising  there  the  funds 
for  the  third  and  successful  attempt.  More- 
over Mr.  Cooper  upheld  the  credit  of  the 
Newfoundland  company,  personally  paying 
the  drafts  drawn  upon  it,  and  taking  its 
bonds  as  his  security.  It  is  too  much  to  say 
that  the  Atlantic  cable  would  never  have 
been  laid,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  enterprise  would  have  been  long  sus- 
pended, without  this  timely  aid.  The  third 
cable  was  a  success  ;  the  lost  second  was  re- 
covered and  made  useful ;  and  now  the  thing 
is  easy  which  thus  seemed  so  problematical. 
If  Peter  Cooper  received  in  the  end  a  hand- 
some sum  from  this  investment,  who  could 
grudge  him  the  wealth  so  acquired  ? 


IV 

INTENTIONS 

The  inventions  projected,  though  in  many 
instances  not  perfected  or  successfully  intro- 
duced, by  Mr.  Cooper  constitute  a  long  list 
and  cover  a  wide  field.  A  few  of  them  may 
be  mentioned  here,  in  addition  to  those  to 
which  allusion  has  been  made  already.  It 
will  be  seen  that  even  those  which  failed  of 
commercial  success  generally  contained  the 
germs  of  future  mechanical  progress,  and 
bore  witness  to  the  extraordinary  vigor  and 
versatility  of  his  genius. 

When  the  Erie  Canal  was  approaching 
completion  it  occurred  to  Mr.  Cooper  that 
canal  boats  might  be  propelled  by  the  power 
of  water  drawn  from  a  higher  level  and 
moving  a  series  of  endless  chains  along  the 
canal.  After  some  preliminary  experiments 
he  built  a  flat-bottomed  scow,  arranged  a 
water  wheel  to  utilize  the  tidal  current  in 


30  PETER   COOPER 

the  East  Eiver,  and  actually  achieved  a  trial 
trip  of  two  miles  and  return,  in  which  Gov- 
ernor Clinton  and  other  invited  guests  took 
part.  The  governor  was  so  well  pleased 
that  he  paid  Mr.  Cooper  eight  hundred  dol- 
lars for  the  first  chance  to  purchase  the 
right  of  applying  the  method  on  the  new 
canal.  But  the  scheme  failed  for  the  reason 
(as  Mr.  Cooper  explained  half  a  century 
later)  that  the  right  of  way  for  the  Erie 
Canal  had  been  secured  from  the  farmers  of 
the  State  by  representing  to  them  the  profit 
which  they  would  realize  from  selling  forage, 
etc.,  for  the  use  of  canal  boats,  which  were 
to  be  drawn  by  horses  or  mules.  The  in- 
troduction of  mechanical  power  would  de- 
stroy these  inducements,  and  the  plan  was 
abandoned,  —  though  Mr.  Cooper  had  de- 
monstrated its  feasibility  by  running  his 
endless  chain  on  the  East  Eiver  for  ten  days 
and  carrying  hundreds  of  passengers  over 
the  trial  route.  It  is  not  likely  that  such  a 
use  of  water  power  on  the  Erie  Canal  would 
have  proved  practicable  on  a  large  scale  ; 
but  the  endless    chain,  which  Mr.   Cooper 


INVENTIONS  31 

apparently  considered  as  a  minor  feature 
only,  has  been  adopted  since,  and  lies  at  the 
basis  of  the  famous  Belgian  system  of  river 
and  canal  transportation. 

In  1824  the  wave  of  enthusiastic  sym- 
pathy for  the  Greeks  which  swept  over  the 
country  upon  receipt  of  the  tidings  of  their 
revolt  against  Turkish  tyranny  stimulated 
Mr.  Cooper  to  invent  a  torpedo  boat,  to  be 
steered  from  the  shore  by  "  two  steel  wires, 
like  the  reins  of  a  horse."  But  on  the  trial 
trip  of  the  boat  a  ship  crossed  and  broke  the 
wires  when  about  six  of  their  total  length  of 
ten  miles  had  been  let  out.  The  delay  made 
the  invention  too  late  for  use  by  the  Greeks, 
and  it  was  not  further  pursued. 

About  1835  the  subject  of  aerial  naviga- 
tion had  in  the  United  States  one  of  its 
periodical  revivals.  Mr.  Cooper,  believing 
that  a  motive  power  developed  from  materials 
of  small  weight  was  essential  to  the  solution 
of  the  problem,  resolved  to  employ  the  ex- 
plosive force  of  chloride  of  nitrogen,  —  one 
of  the  most  dangerous  compounds  known  to 
chemists.     The  result  of  his  experiments  in 


32  PETER  COOPER 

this  direction  was  an  explosion  which  blew 
his  apparatus  to  pieces,  and  nearly  cost  the 
audacious  inventor  an  eye.  In  fact,  though 
the  organ  was  saved  from  total  destruction, 
it  was  permanently  injured. 

The  conveyance  of  freight  by  aerial  cables 
—  a  method  now  widely  used  —  was  prac- 
ticed by  Mr.  Cooper  at  an  early  day.  The 
use  of  elevators  in  buildings  was  foreseen 
and  provided  for  by  him  in  the  erection  of 
the  Cooper  Union  building,  and  in  that 
building  also  he  introduced  for  the  first  time 
iron  beams  as  part  of  a  fire-proof  construc- 
tion. In  these  and  other  inventions  his  pro- 
phetic intuitions  were  illustrated. 

But  such  intuitions  do  not  fully  take  the 
place  of  scientific  training ;  and  one  of  the 
inventions  of  Peter  Cooper  —  which  he  con- 
sidered for  many  years,  and  possibly  to  the 
very  last,  as  his  crowning  achievement  —  was 
a  curious  example  of  misdirected  ingenuity. 
It  is  worthy  of  notice  here,  however,  for 
another  reason,  namely,  because  of  its  acci- 
dental association  with  one  of  its  inventor's 
most  remarkable  triumphs. 


INVENTIONS  33 

As  a  young  apprentice  he  had  studied  the 
steam  engine,  and  had  resolved  that  he  would 
improve  it  by  doing  away  with  the  crank. 
To  his  mind  this  was  a  source  of  great  loss 
of  power,  and  he  believed  that,  if  he  could 
transform  the  rectilinear  motion  of  the  piston 
rod  directly  into  rotary  motion  without  the 
intervention  of  the  crank,  he  would  effect  a 
notable  economy. 

Now,  there  is  no  such  loss  of  power  through 
the  crank  as  he  imagined,  nor  is  it  likely  that 
any  other  device  for  obtaining  rotary  from 
rectilinear  motion  will  be  found  superior  to 
that  which  Watt  devised.  But  Peter  Cooper 
assailed  this  fancied  evil  with  undoubting 
confidence,  both  as  to  its  existence  and  as  to 
his  ability  to  do  away  with  it.  The  result 
was  an  invention  for  which  he  received, 
April  28,  1828,  letters  patent  of  the  United 
States.  At  that  early  day  patents  were 
comparatively  few,  —  so  few  that  this  one 
bears  no  number  ;  and  the  duties  of  general 
administration  did  not  prevent  the  highest 
officials  from  attending  to  details.  This 
patent,  issued  to  Peter  Cooper,  of  New  York, 


34  PETER  COOPER 

was  personally  signed  by  John  Quincy  Ad- 
ams,* President;  countersigned  by  Henry 
Clay,  Secretary  of  State;  transmitted  to 
William  Wirt,  Attorney-General ;  examined, 
approved,  and  signed  by  him,  and  returned 
to  the  Department  of  State  for  final  delivery 
to  the  patentee.  It  grants  for  fourteen 
years  to  the  said  Peter  Cooper,  his  heirs,  ad- 
ministrators, and  assignees  the  exclusive  right 
to  make,  use,  or  license  others  to  use,  the 
described  improvement  in  the  method  of  ef- 
fecting rotary  motion  directly  from  the  alter- 
nate rectilinear  motion  of  a  steam  piston. 
Evidently  these  distinguished  statesmen  — 
Adams,  Clay,  and  Wirt  —  were  not  experts 
in  mechanics,  or  at  least  did  not  undertake 
to  hinder  by  technical  criticism  the  experi- 
ments of  American  ambition  ;  and  there  was 
no  trained  c*orps  of  patent-examiners  to  de- 
cide upon  the  novelty,  practicability,  and 
usefulness  of  any  proposed  improvement  in 
the  arts.  Probably  the  government  shared 
at  that  time  the  dominant  American  feeling 
of  unconquerable  youth,  ready  to  attack  all 
problems,  especially  those    which    previous 


INVENTIONS  35 

experience  had  pronounced  insoluble,  and  to 
determine  the  impossible  by  attempting  it. 
This  spirit  has  in  fact  more  or  less  dominated 
the  United  States  Patent  Office  down  to  the 
present  time.  With  all  its  present  equip- 
ment of  examiners,  trained  in  theory  and 
versed  in  technical  literature,  it  still  concerns 
itself  chiefly  in  the  consideration  of  a  pro- 
posed invention  with  the  question  of  novelty, 
rather  than  that  of  feasibility  or  value  ;  and 
the  effect  has  been  that,  while  thousands  of 
patents  are  granted  for  absurd,  unnecessary, 
or  inoperative  devices,  the  net  result  of  the 
encouragement  thus  given  to  individual  in- 
genuity and  audacity  is  a  catalogue  of  great 
inventions  unmatched  in  the  history  of  any 
other  nation. 

The  patent  of  Peter  Cooper,  which  now 
lies  before  me,  —  a  time-stained  parchment 
bearing  the  great  seal  of  the  United  States 
and  the  autographs  of  the  famous  men  named 
above,  —  is  accompanied  by  no  drawings ; 
but  it  contains  a  detailed  specification  which 
shows  that  the  invention  consisted  in  an  ar- 
rangement by  which,  at  each  forward  move- 


36  PETER  COOPER 

ment,  a  prolongation  of  the  piston  rod  clawed 
into  an  endless  chain,  which  was  pnlled  back 
by  the  return  stroke.  This  chain  passed 
around  a  wheel,  to  which  it  consequently 
imparted  a  rotary  motion. 

Engineers  do  not  need  to  be  told  that 
this  cumbrous  arrangement  could  not  suc- 
cessfully replace  the  crank,  even  if  such  a 
replacement  were  desirable.  Yet  the  in- 
ventor constructed  a  working-machine,  and  ' 
satisfied  himself,  by  a  "  duty  trial  "  of  some 
sort,  that  it  "  saved  two  fifths  of  the  steam." 
His  discovery,  however,  was  not  hailed  with 
immediate  recognition  by  the  mechanical 
public;  and  its  author,  undisturbed  in  his 
faith,  bided  his  time. 

This,  by  the  way,  points  to  a  character- 
istic of  Peter  Cooper,  differentiating  him 
from  the  numerous  enthusiasts  whom  pru- 
dent men  are  accustomed  to  avoid.  He 
was  not  a  man  "  of  one  idea."  His  fertile 
and  ingenious  mind  threw  out  its  sugges- 
tions in  every  direction,  into  fields  untrod- 
den by  experience  ;  but  when  any  such  plan 
failed  of  acceptance,  he  turned,  with  undi- 


INVENTIONS  37 

minished  courage  and  hope,  to  something 
else,  remaining,  nevertheless,  still  steadfast 
in  his  former  conception,  and  ready  to  seize 
any  opportunity  for  its  realization. 

Thus  it  came  to  pass  that  Mr.  Cooper's 
abortive  improvement  upon  the  steam  en- 
gine was  the  source  of  his  fame  as  the 
builder  of  the  first  American  locomotive,  as 
the  following  chapter  will  explain. 


THE   TOM   THUMB 

In  the  specification  of  the  patent  secured 
in  1828  by  Mr.  Cooper  for  an  improved 
steam  engine,  he  took  pains  to  declare  the 
suitability  of  his  invention  as  a  motor  for 
"  land  carriages."  No  doubt  he  had  heard 
of  Stephenson's  "  Rocket,"  if  not  of  the 
engine  built  by  Blenkinsop  in  1813,  the 
sight  of  which  in  operation  caused  Stephen- 
son to  resolve  that  he  would  "  make  a  bet- 
ter." The  famous  competitive  trial  of  the 
Rocket,  the  Novelty,  the  Sanspareil,  and 
the  Perseverance,  on  a  two-mile  section  of 
the  Liverpool  and  Manchester  Railroad,  took 
place  in  October,  1827,  at  which  time  Peter 
Cooper  must  have  been  perfecting  the  appli- 
cation for  his  patent. 

But  other  circumstances  played  their  part 
in  the  result  which  we  are  about  to  consider. 


THE  TOM  THUMB  39 

Some  time  before  1830  Mr.  Cooper  had 
been  drawn  into  a  land  speculation  at  Can- 
ton, in  the  suburbs  of  Baltimore.  Failing 
of  support  from  his  partners,  he  had  been 
obliged  to  buy  them  out,  and  to  assume  the 
whole  burden  of  the  enterprise.  Just  at 
that  time  there  was  great  popular  expecta- 
tion of  the  future  importance  of  Baltimore. 
A  little  earlier,  there  had  been  general  de- 
spair among  the  merchants  of  that  city. 
New  York,  Philadelphia,  and  Baltimore  were 
seeking  the  trade  of  the  region  beyond  the 
Alleghanies,  —  then  "  the  West,"  but  now 
the  centre  of  the  population  of  the  United 
States.  New  York  flanked  the  mountains 
with  her  Erie  Canal;  Philadelphia  got  at 
last  a  practicable,  though  less  satisfactory, 
water  line ;  but  Baltimore,  though  nearest 
of  all  to  the  longed-for  market,  found, 
through  careful  examination  by  eminent 
engineers,  that  no  canal  was  practicable  for 
her,  at  a  cost  within  her  means.  In  1824 
and  1825  the  consequent  general  despond- 
ency concerning  the  future  of  the  city  was 


40  PETER  COOPER 

so  strong  that  Baltimore  merchants  began 
to  move  to  New  York  and  Philadelphia.1 

But  at  this  period  the  world  began  to 
hear  of  railways.  A  well-known  merchant 
of  Baltimore,  returning  from  England,  de- 
scribed with  enthusiasm  the  coal  trains, 
drawn  by  the  cumbrous  ante-Stephenson 
engines,  which  he  had  seen  there.  The 
idea  of  a  tramway  (with  or  without  steam 
motors)  found  ready  acceptance  in  a  com- 
munity both  enterprising  and  desperate.  A 
town  meeting,  held  in  1826,  to  consider 
Western  communications,  resulted  in  an  ap- 
plication to  the  Maryland  legislature,  and 
the  incorporation,  in  March,  1827,  of  the 
Baltimore  and  Ohio,  —  the  first  railroad 
company  thus  created  in  the  United  States 
for  purposes  of  general  transportation,  —  the 
leader  of  that  vast  multitude  of  similar  en- 
terprises, the  history  of  which  is  the  history 
of  our  nation's   marvelous  commercial  pro- 

1  These  and  other  statements  in  this  chapter  are  taken 
from  a  lecture,  delivered  March  23,  1868,  before  the 
Maryland  Institute,  by  Hon.  J.  H.  B.  Latrobe,  giving 
his  personal  recollections  of  the  early  history  of  the  Bal- 
timore and  Ohio  Railroad. 


THE  TOM  THUMB      *  41 

gress.  By  the  legislative  charter,  the  city 
of  Baltimore  and  the  State  of  Maryland 
were  authorized  to  subscribe  to  the  com- 
pany's stock. 

In  the  address  already  cited,  Mr.  La- 
trobe,  an  eye-witness,  says  of  the  scenes 
which  followed :  — 

"Then  came  a  scene  which  almost  beg- 
gars description.  By  this  time,  public  ex- 
citement had  gone  beyond  fever  heat  and 
reached  the  boiling  point.  Everybody 
wanted  stock.  The  number  of  shares  sub- 
scribed were  to  be  apportioned,  if  the  limit 
of N the  capital  should  be  exceeded;  and 
every  one  set  about  obtaining  proxies.  Par- 
ents subscribed  in  the  names  of  their  chil- 
dren, and  paid  the  dollar  on  each  share  that 
the  rules  prescribed.  Before  even  a  survey 
had  been  made,  the  possession  of  stock  in 
any  quantity  was  regarded  as  a  provision 
for  old  age ;  and  great  was  the  scramble  to 
obtain  it.  The  excitement  in  Baltimore 
roused  public  attention  elsewhere ;  and  a 
railroad  mania  began  to  pervade  the  land." 

The  proposed  railroad  was  to  pass  through 


42  PETER  COOPER 

Mr.  Cooper's  Canton  property,  which  he 
had  already  begun  to  develop,  "  so  that  it 
should  pay  the  taxes,"  by  building  upon  it 
charcoal  kilns,  after  a  design  of  his  own, 
with  the  purpose  of  turning  the  forest  into 
charcoal,  and,  by  means  of  this  fuel,  smelt- 
ing the  iron  ore  which  the  land  contained. 
What  was  the  immediate  commercial  out- 
come of  this  enterprise  is  not  recorded. 
Mr.  Cooper's  characteristic  recollection,  more 
than  sixty  years  later,  was  that,  "  with  the 
exception  of  a  dangerous  explosion,"  which 
nearly  cost  him  his  life,  the  charcoal  kilns 
were  "  a  great  success !  " 

But  the  great  value  of  the  property  was 
expected  to  be  realized  through  the  new 
railroad ;  and  this  expectation  suffered  a 
serious  blow  when  the  horse  cars  failed  to 
pay  expenses ;  the  operation  of  the  line  was 
suspended ;  the  directors  lost  faith  in  the 
enterprise ;  and  many  of  the  principal  stock- 
holders declared  that  they  would  rather  lose 
the  investment  made  so  far  than  "throw 
good  money  after  bad."  For  the  hope  that 
the  new  agency  of  steam  might  help  them 


THE  TOM  THUMB  43 

out  was  blighted  by  the  news  from  England 
that  Stephenson  had  said  that  steam  could 
not  be  used  as  a  motive  power  on  a  road 
having  curves  of  less  than  900  feet  radius ; 
and  this  road  had,  at  Point  of  Rocks,  a  ne- 
cessary curve  with  a  radius  of  only  150  feet! 
The  situation  presented  exactly  the  sort 
of  challenge  calculated  to  arouse  the  cour- 
age and  ingenuity  of  Peter  Cooper,  besides 
appealing  to  another  of  his  personal  charac- 
teristics, namely,  his  undying  and  unalter- 
able faith  in  his  own  ideas  and  conclusions, 
whether  they  had  achieved  recognition  or 
not.  He  could  lay  aside  a  scheme  which 
had  not  found  immediate  and  successful  ap- 
plication, and  turn  his  attention,  with  undi- 
minished vivacity,  to  something  else;  but 
he  never  owned  to  a  real  defeat.  And  now 
the  problem  presented  at  Baltimore  seemed 
to  him  a  providential  call  for  his  interven- 
tion. If  the  English  engineers  could  not 
run  their  locomotives  around  sharp  curves, 
it  must  be  because  they  persisted  in  using 
the  vicious  crank,  which  he  had  already  su- 
perseded by  his  (temporarily  unappreciated) 


44  PETER  COOPER 

invention !  And,  with  unshaken  faith  in 
that  device,  he  informed  the  Baltimore  and 
Ohio  directors  (to  use  the  words  in  which, 
long  afterwards,  he  told  the  story)  that  he 
thought  he  "could  knock  together  a  loco- 
motive which  would  get  a  train  around  the 
Point  of  Rocks." 

It  is  a  curious  circumstance  that,  ever 
since  that  day,  the  characteristic  difference 
between  English  and  American  locomotives 
has  been  the  ability  of  the  latter  to  pass 
curves  of  shorter  radius  than  the  former 
can  safely  follow.  The  reason,  as  all  rail- 
way engineers  know,  is  that  the  usual  Eng- 
lish construction  involves  a  rigid  frame, 
while  the  American  has  a  movable  truck  or 
"bogie"  under  the  front  part  of  the  en- 
gine. This  solution  of  the  problem  was  not 
reached  by  Mr.  Cooper.  What  he,  in  fact, 
accomplished  was  simply  a  piece  of  audacity, 
which  encouraged  the  enterprise  of  his  coun- 
trymen, by  proving  that  the  dictum  of  lim- 
ited experience  abroad  was  not  conclusive. 
Two  features  of  his  Baltimore  experiment 
were  characteristic  of  him.     The  first  was 


THE  TOM  THUMB  45 

that  he  undertook  it,  not  merely  in  order  to 
vindicate  his  invention,  but  to  effect  a  prac- 
tical result,  namely,  to  make  his  land  specu- 
lation pay.  And  the  second  was  that  when 
he  found  it  difficult  to  operate  his  pet  in- 
vention in  this  experiment,  he  laid  it  aside 
at  once,  —  without  losing  an  atom  of  faith 
in  it,  but  also  without  persisting  (as  a  typi- 
cal enthusiast  would  have  done)  in  risking 
upon  the  vindication  of  his  personal  opinion 
in  one  matter  the  success  of  another  under- 
taking, more  immediately  important. 

Mr.  Cooper's  own  recollection  of  this 
event  deserves  to  be  told  in  his  own  words. 
He  says  : 2  — 

"  I  came  back  to  New  York  for  a  little 
bit  of  a  brass  engine  of  mine  —  about  one 
horse  power  (it  had  a  3^  in.  cylinder  and 
14  in.  stroke)  —  and  carried  it  back  to  Bal- 
timore. I  got  some  boiler  iron  and  made  a 
boiler  about  as  high  as  an  ordinary  wash 
boiler  ;  and  then  how  to  connect  the  boiler 
with  the  engine  I  did  n't  know.  I  could  n't 
find   any  iron   pipes.     The   fact   was  that 

1  Manuscript  of  his  Reminiscences, 


46  PETER  COOPER 

there  were  none  for  sale  in  this  country. 
So  I  took  two  muskets,  broke  off  the  wooden 
parts,  and  used  the  barrels  for  tubing,  one 
on  one  side  and  the  other  on  the  other  side 
of  the  boiler.  I  went  into  a  coach-maker's 
shop  and  made  this  locomotive,  which  I 
called  the  Tom  Thumb,  because  it  was  so 
insignificant.  I  did  n't  intend  it  for  actual 
service,  but  only  to  show  the  directors  what 
could  be  done.  I  meant  to  test  two  things : 
first,  I  meant  to  show  that  short  turns  could 
be  made;  and  secondly,  that  I  could  get 
rotary  motion  without  the  use  of  a  crank. 
I  effected  both  of  these  things  very  nicely. 
I  changed  the  movement  from  a  reciprocat- 
ing to  a  rotary  motion. 

"  I  got  up  steam  one  Saturday  night. 
The  president  of  the  road  and  two  or  three 
other  gentlemen  were  there.  We  got  on 
the  truck  and  went  out  two  or  three  miles. 
All  were  delighted  ;  for  it  opened  new  pos- 
sibilities for  the  railroad.  I  put  up  the  lo- 
comotive for  the  night  in  a  shed,  and  in- 
vited the  company  to  ride  to  Ellicott's  Mills 
on  Monday.     Monday  morning,  what  was 


THE  TOM  THUMB  47 

my  chagrin  to  find  that  some  scamp  had 
been  there,  and  chopped  off  all  the  copper 
from  the  engine,  —  doubtless  in  order  to  sell 
it  to  some  junk  dealer ! 

"  It  took  me  a  week  or  more  to  repair  the 
machine ;  then  some  one  got  in  and  broke  a 
piece  out  of  the  wheel,  in  experimenting 
with  it ;  and  then  two  wheels,  cast  one  after 
the  other,  were  damaged  by  the  carelessness 
of  the  turner.  I  was  thoroughly  disgusted 
and  discouraged ;  but,  being  determined 
that  I  would  not  be  balked  entirely,  I 
changed  the  engine  so  that  the  power  could 
be  applied  through  the  ordinary  connection 
with  a  crank. 1 

"  At  last  all  was  ready ;  and,  on  a  Monday, 
we  started,  —  six  in  the  engine,  and  thirty- 
six  on  the  car  which  I  took  in  tow.  We 
went  up  an  average  grade  of  eighteen  feet 
to  the  mile ;  made  the  thirteen  miles  to 
Ellicott's  Mills  in  one  hour  and  twelve  min- 
utes ;  and  came  back  in  fifty-seven  minutes. 

1  This  was  the  sacrifice  of  a  favorite  invention  to  im- 
mediate practical  considerations,  which  has  been  men- 
tioned above  as  an  instance  of    Mr.  Cooper's  common 


48  PETER  COOPER 

The  result  of  that  experiment  was  that  the 
bonds  of  the  railroad  company  were  sold  at 
once,  and  there  was  no  longer  any  doubt  as 
to  the  success  of  the  road." 

The  Tom  Thumb  continued  for  several 
weeks  to  make  trips  to  Ellicott's  Mills ;  and 
on  one  occasion  (September  18, 1830)  ran  a 
race  from  Riley  House  into  Baltimore  (about 
nine  miles)  with  a  light  car,  drawn  on  a 
parallel  track  by  a  gray  horse  noted  for  speed 
and  endurance.  The  contest  was  planned 
by  the  stagecoach  proprietors  of  Baltimore, 
with  the  view  of  demonstrating  that  nothing 
could  be  gained  by  the  substitution  of  steam 
for  horse  power  on  the  railroad.  The  gray 
horse  won  the  race,  but  not  until  after  the 
Tom  Thumb  had  passed  him,  and  only  by 
reason  of  a  temporary  breakdown  of  the 
machine,  which  caused  a  delay  too  great  to 
be  subsequently  made  up.  Mr.  Cooper's 
characteristic  recollection  of  the  event,  as 
given  fifty-five  years  later,  was  that  "  they 
tried  a  little  race  one  day,  but  it  didn't 
amount  to  anything.  It  was  rather  funny  ; 
and  the  locomotive  got  out  of  gear." 


THE  TOM  THUMB  49 

Mr.  Latrobe  says  of  the  Tom  Thumb :  — 
"  The  machine  was  not  larger  than  the 
hand  cars  used  by  workmen  to  transfer  them- 
selves from  place  to  place ;  and  as  the  speaker 
now  recalls  its  appearance,  the  only  wonder 
is  that  so  apparently  insignificant  a  contriv- 
ance should  ever  have  been  regarded  as 
competent  to  the  smallest  results.  But  Mr. 
Cooper  was  wiser  than  many  of  the  wisest 
around  him.  His  engine  could  not  have 
weighed  a  ton ;  but  he  saw  in  it  a  principle 
which  the  forty-ton  engines  of  to-day  have 
but  served  to  develop  and  demonstrate. 
The  boiler  of  Mr.  Cooper's  engine  was  not 
as  large  as  the  kitchen  boiler  attached  to 
many  a  range  in  modern  mansions.  It  was 
of  about  the  same  diameter,  but  not  much 
more  than  half  as  high.  It  stood  upright 
in  the  car,  and  was  filled  above  the  furnace, 
which  occupied  the  lower  section,  with  ver- 
tical tubes.  The  cylinder  was  but  three 
and  one  half  inches  in  diameter ;  and  speed 
was  got  up  by  gearing.  No  natural  draft 
could  have  been  sufficient  to  get  up  steam 
in  so  small  a  boiler ;  and  Mr.  Cooper  used, 


50  PETER  COOPER 

therefore,  a  blowing  apparatus,  driven  by  a 
drum,  attached  to  one  of  the  car  wheels,  over 
which  passed  a  cord,  that,  in  its  turn,  worked 
a  pulley  on  the  shaft  of  the  blower.  The  con- 
trivance for  dispensing  with  a  crank,  though 
its  general  appearance  is  recollected,  the 
speaker  cannot  describe  with  any  accuracy ; 
nor  is  it  important,  —  it  came  to  no- 
thing. .  .   . 

"  In  a  patent  case,  tried  many  years 
afterwards,  the  boiler  of  Mr.  Cooper's  engine 
became,  in  some  connection  which  has  been 
forgotten,  important  as  a  piece  of  evidence. 
It  was  hunted  for,  and  found  among  some 
old  rubbish  at  Mount  Clare.  It  was  diffi- 
cult to  imagine  that  it  had  even  generated 
steam  enough  to  drive  a  coffee  mill,  much 
less  that  it  had  performed  the  feats  here 
narrated." 

After  this  experimental  demonstration, 
the  Tom  Thumb  retired  into  honorable 
but  obscure  repose  in  its  maker's  warehouse 
at  New  York,  from  which  it  emerged,  fifty 
years  later,  to  take  part  in  the  centennial 
celebration  of  the  beginning  of  the  commer- 


THE  TOM  THUMB  51 

cial  history  of  Baltimore  (that  place  having 
been  made  a  port  of  entry  in  1780).  Accord- 
ing to  a  contemporary  report  of  the  festival, 
"  in  the  vast  procession,  Mr.  Cooper  and  his 
little  Tom  Thumb  locomotive  were  the  two 
most  conspicuous  objects,  and  received  all 
the  honors  which  could  be  paid  by  a  quarter 
of  a  million  of  enthusiastic  people." 


VI 

MUNICIPAL    AFFAIRS 

Peter  Cooper's  acquaintance  with  the 
affairs  of  New  York  city  ranged  from  the 
time  when,  as  a  child,  he  was  taken  by  his 
mother  to  see  the  last  remaining  fragments 
of  the  stockade  erected  by  the  early  inhabit- 
ants for  protection  against  the  Indians,  to 
the  full  metropolitan  glory  of  the  decade  of 
his  death.  This  wonderful  municipal  history 
is  too  commonly  regarded  from  a  special 
standpoint,  as  if  it  were  but  the  record  of  a 
continually  renewed  and  often  unsuccessful 
struggle  against  corrupt  and  incompetent 
city  government.  Contests  of  this  kind, 
under  democratic  institutions,  always  occupy 
more  space  in  the  press,  and  make  more 
noise  in  public  oratory,  than  the  quiet  but 
steady  progress  of  commercial  undertakings, 
and  the  labors  of  unselfish  citizens  for  edu- 
cation, art,  and  social  improvement,  which  go 


MUNICIPAL  AFFAIRS  53 

on  beneath  the  turbulent  surface.  Americans 
have  long  suffered  under  the  unjust  imputa- 
tion of  peculiar  devotion  to  "  the  almighty 
dollar."  The  fact  is  that  in  no  other  country 
do  individuals  give  so  much  or  do  so  much 
without  pecuniary  reward  —  whether  for 
personal  friendship  or  for  public  spirit  —  as 
in  the  United  States.  The  munificence  of 
private  benefactions  and  endowments,  far 
surpassing  the  government  support  given  in 
other  nations  to  similar  institutions,  furnish 
an  abundant  proof  of  the  first  half  of  this 
proposition ;  while  the  other  half  is  proved 
by  the  innumerable  boards,  committees,  and 
other  organized  bodies,  to  which  active  busi- 
ness men  give  time  and  thought  without  re- 
muneration. 

This  spirit  has  never  been  wholly  missed 
in  public  affairs,  even  in  the  city  of  New 
York,  so  often  charged  with  the  lack  of  it. 
All  the  great  features  of  its  municipal  pro- 
gress, even  those  which  have  been,  at  some 
stage,  tainted  with  lamentable  corruption, 
have  been  originated  or  supported  by  un- 
selfish public  spirit.     It  might  even  be  said 


54  PETER  COOPER 

that  without  this  support,  innocently  given 
and  deceitfully  misused,  the  schemers  for 
private  gain  could  not  have  achieved  their 
periodical  and  temporary  successes. 

Peter  Cooper  was  an  illustrious  example 
of  good  citizenship  in  this  respect.  First 
elected  to  public  office  as  "  assistant  alder- 
man," in  1828,  he  turned  his  attention  im- 
mediately upon  the  subject  most  important 
to  the  growth  and  welfare  of  a  city,  yet 
most  likely  to  be  neglected  until  it  is  forced 
upon  the  community  as  an  unwelcome  neces- 
sity, —  namely,  the  water  supply.  Up  to 
that  time,  New  York  had  depended  upon 
the  springs  of  Manhattan  Island,  some  of 
which  supplied  water,  conveyed  through  the 
streets  by  means  of  wooden  pipes  (bored 
logs),  while  most  of  them  were  utilized  by 
means  of  pumps  only,  to  which  the  inhabit- 
ants sent  for  their  supply.1 

1  A  curious  survival  of  this  state  of  things  is  the  Man- 
hattan Company,  which  secured  from  the  legislature  a 
perpetual  charter,  so  skillfully  framed  (by  Aaron  Burr) 
that,  although  it  grants  much  more  extensive  powers 
than  could  now  be  obtained  by  a  corporation,  it  cannot 
be  successfully  assailed  so  long  as  the  fundamental  con- 


MUNICIPAL  AFFAIRS  55 

Mr.  Cooper  induced  the  water  com- 
mittee, of  which  he  had  been  appointed  a 
member,  to  visit  Philadelphia  and  inspect 
the  works  by  which  the  water  of  the  Schuyl- 
kill was  raised  to  a  high  reservoir,  and 
thence  distributed  in  iron  pipes  throughout 
that  city,  and  then  to  examine  the  Croton 
and  Bronx  rivers,  for  the  purpose  of  ascer- 
taining what  these  streams  could  supply. 
The  season  being  dry,  the  rivers  were  so  low 
that  Mr.  Cooper  was  not  satisfied  of  their 
capacity  to  furnish  the  needed  quantity ;  so 
he  investigated  further,  on  his  own  account, 
the  watershed  (then  a  wilderness)  of  the 
Hackensack  Eiver  in  New  Jersey,  and  sub- 

dition  is  fulfilled,  —  namely,  that  the  company  shall  be 
prepared  to  furnish  water  at  all  times,  on  demand.  It  is 
said  that,  in  compliance  with  this  requirement,  a  small 
steam  pump  is  kept  continually  running,  in  connection 
with  a  short  system  of  pipes,  somewhere  near  the  City 
Hall,  and  that  the  company  stands  ready  to  furnish  water 
to  any  applicant  —  only,  the  charter  does  not  fix  the  price 
which  it  may  exact !  So  far  as  I  know,  the  only  use  now 
made  of  the  extensive  powers  granted  by  this  famous 
charter  is  the  maintenance  of  the  Manhattan  Bank.  A 
few  years  ago,  excavations  in  lower  Broadway  brought  to 
light  bored  logs,  which  were  supposed  to  be  relics  of  the 
old  "  Manhattan  "  system. 


66  PETER  COOPER 

sequently  submitted  to  the  board  of  alder- 
men plans  and  models,  illustrating  a  scheme 
for  the  supply  of  water  to  New  York  from 
that  region,  by  means  of  pipes  laid  under 
the  North  Eiver. 

To  the  end  of  his  life,  Mr.  Cooper  ad- 
hered to  his  preference  for  this  method  of 
conveying  water  across  river  channels,  as 
compared  with  elevated  aqueducts,  like  the 
"  high  bridge  "  subsequently  constructed 
across  the  Harlem  River.  And  in  this  par- 
ticular, his  intuitive  engineer's  judgment  was 
not  at  fault,  although  the  classic  example 
of  the  Romans,  who  spent  untold  labor 
and  time  in  building  aqueducts,  where  bur- 
ied conduits  would  have  been  both  cheaper 
and  better,  still  dominated  the  professional 
world.  But  Peter  Cooper  furnished  another 
example  of  his  practical  wisdom,  by  sacri- 
ficing his  superior  theory  for  the  sake  of  the 
useful  result  contemplated.  Thorough  study 
showed  that,  although  the  Croton  region 
could  not  be  relied  upon  at  all  times  for  an 
immediately  adequate  water  supply,  yet  its 
average  through  the  year  was  sufficient  for 


MUNICIPAL  AFFAIRS  57 

the  purpose,  so  that  the  creation,  by  means 
of  higher  dams,  of  large  storage  reservoirs, 
would  solve  the  pressing  problem.  This  plan 
was  ultimately  adopted,  and  has  been  pur- 
sued with  suitable  enlargements,  ever  since. 
Peter  Cooper  was  made  chairman  of  the 
water  committee,  —  a  position  which  he 
retained  until  some  years  after  the  Croton 
system    was   completed. 

In  the  procurement  of  iron  pipes  for  the 
system  of  distribution,  and  their  proper  test- 
ing before  acceptance,  his  integrity  and  in- 
telligence were  specially  effective  in  protect- 
ing the  interests  of  the  city,  by  securing  the 
best  material  at  the  lowest  cost.  While  Mr. 
Cooper  was  a  strong  "  protectionist,"  favor- 
ing the  encouragement  of  American  indus- 
tries, he  never  recognized  any  distinctions 
among  Americans.  In  his  patriotic  thought, 
the  unit  to  be  regarded  was  not  the  city  or 
the  State  of  New  York,  but  the  United 
States  of  America ;  and  he  earnestly  opposed 
the  contention  of  the  New  York  iron  found- 
ers, that  contracts  for  the  pipe  of  the  Croton 
system  ought  not  to  be  made  with  inhabit- 


58  PETER  COOPER 

ants  of  another  State.  His  arguments  pre- 
vailed; and  the  pipe  was  ordered  from  a 
Philadelphia  manufacturer,  who  offered  a 
better  article  at  a  lower  price. 

During  Mr.  Cooper's  official  service,  and 
not  without  his  active  aid  and  advice  (though 
his  personal  attention  was  mainly  given  to 
the  water  department),  the  beginnings  of  an 
organized  police  and  fire  service  were  estab- 
lished. When  he  was  first  elected  to  office 
the  city  was  guarded  by  watchmen,  who 
served  four  hours  every  night  for  seventy- 
five  cents.  Every  householder  was  expected 
to  have  leathern  buckets  in  his  hall,  and  in 
case  of  an  alarm  of  fire  to  throw  them  into 
the  street,  so  that  the  citizens  voluntarily 
running  to  the  rescue  could  form  a  lme  to 
the  nearest  pump,  and,  passing  the  water  by 
means  of  the  buckets,  supply  the  tank  of  the 
small  hand-engine,  which  then  squirted  it 
upon  the  burning  building.  It  is  needless  to 
detail  here  the  steps  by  which  out  of  this 
crude  beginning  the  present  effective  New 
York  Fire  Department  has  been  perfected. 
Suffice  it  to  say  that  the  beginning  itself  was 


MUNICIPAL  AFFAIRS  59 

promoted,  and  its  future  importance  was 
foreseen,  by  Peter  Cooper  and  his  public- 
spirited  colleagues. 

But  a  still  more  profoundly  important 
element  of  municipal  and  national  progress, 
in  which  the  participation  of  Peter  Cooper 
was  active  and  influential,  was  the  free 
public  school  system  in  New  York.  This 
system  was  originally  planted  by  the  great 
mayor  and  governor,  De  Witt  Clinton,  to 
whom  the  State  is  indebted  for  the  Erie 
Canal,  and  for  many  other  plans  and  im- 
pulses scarcely  less  significant.  While  Clin- 
ton was  an  advocate  of  universal  suffrage, 
he  perceived  the  danger  of  granting  this 
power  to  an  ignorant  and  largely  foreign 
population  ;  and  in  1805  he  secured  a  char- 
ter for  "The  Society  for  Establishing  a 
Free  School  in  the  City  of  New  York  for 
the  Education  of  Such  Poor  Children  as  do 
not  Belong  to,  or  are  not  Provided  for  by, 
Any  Religious  Society." 

The  appeal  of  this  society  to  "  the  affluent 
and  charitable  of  every  denomination  of 
Christians  "  was  liberally  answered,  and  by 


60  PETER  COOPER 

December,  1809,  a  school  capable  of  accom- 
modating five  hundred  children  had  been 
erected  upon  a  purchased  site.  This  was 
the  beginning  in  New  York  city  of  the  free 
school  system,  over  which  for  twenty-five 
years  De  Witt  Clinton  presided.  During  that 
period  the  schools,  supported  by  generous 
private  contributions,  and  also  after  a  while 
by  a  state  tax,  steadily  increased  in  number, 
efficiency,  and  public  favor.  Peter  Cooper 
had  been  always  a  zealous  supporter  of  these 
schools,  but  not  until  1838  did  he  become 
—  by  election  as  a  trustee  of  the  Free 
School  Society — officially  connected  with 
them.  It  was  a  critical  period  in  their  his- 
tory. The  original  national  debt  of  the 
Union  had  been  recently  extinguished,  and 
a  considerable  surplus  had  been  returned  to 
the  contributing  States,  of  which  New  York 
devoted  its  share  to  educational  purposes, 
thus  largely  increasing  the  fund  for  the  city. 
In  1822,  sixteen  years  before,  the  common 
council  had  made  the  free  schools  "  unsecta- 
rian,"  excluding  from  the  benefits  of  the 
fund  all  institutions  of  denominational  char- 


MUNICIPAL  AFFAIRS  61 

acter.  The  various  sects  had  submitted  re- 
luctantly to  this  decision  so  long  as  the  fund 
was  too  small  to  be  divided  among  them ; 
but  its  sudden  enlargement  encouraged  an 
attempt  to  secure  appropriations  for  paro- 
chial schools. 

In  his  first  annual  message  Governor 
Seward  recommended  to  the  legislature  the 
establishment  of  schools  in  which  the  chil- 
dren of  foreigners  might  be  "  instructed  by 
teachers  speaking  the  same  language  with 
themselves  and  professing  the  same  faith." 
The  Roman  Catholic  community,  acting  at 
once  upon  this  suggestion,  sent  a  deputation 
to  the  New  York  common  council  demand- 
ing for  their  schools  "  a  pro  rata  share  "  of 
the  educational  fund,  to' which  as  taxpayers 
they  contributed. 

In  the  resistance  made  to  this  claim  by 
the  Free  School  Society  Mr.  Cooper  took  a 
prominent  and  ardent  part.  The  advocates 
of  unsectarian  public  schools  were  victorious ; 
but  the  controversy  continued  to  agitate  the 
State  until  the  passage  by  the  legislature  in 
1842  of  an  act  establishing  in  New  York 


62  PETER  COOPER 

city  a  new  board  of  education  to  control 
the  schools  supported  from  the  funds  of  the 
State,  and  at  the  same  time  forbidding  the 
support  from  this  fund  of  schools  in  which 
"  any  religious  sectarian  doctrine  or  tenet 
shall  be  taught,  inculcated,  or  practiced." 
The  Free  School  Society,  resenting  and  dis- 
trusting this  new  (and  in  some  respects 
complicated)  arrangement,  continued  its 
separate  activity  for  eleven  years;  but  in 
1853,  the  unsectarian  character  of  the  pub- 
lic schools  of  New  York  having  been  es- 
tablished beyond  question,  the  society  and 
the  board  of  education  were  by  common 
consent  amalgamated  by  statute.  At  the 
final  meeting  of  the  society  Peter  Cooper 
delivered  the  valedictory  address,  the  lan- 
guage of  which  indicates  that  not  without 
apprehension  did  he  contemplate  the  sur- 
render of  the  public  schools  to  the  exclusive 
control  of  a  body  of  officials  likely  to  be 
more  or  less  influenced  by  partisan  or  po- 
litical considerations. 

Yet  his  characteristic  common  sense  came 
again  in   this  instance  to  the  front.     The 


MUNICIPAL  AFFAIRS  63 

moral  which  he  drew  from  his  doubts  and 
fears  was  that  "  the  stewardship  we  are  about 
to  resign  is  not  a  reprieve  from  the  responsi- 
bilities of  the  future."  And  in  obedience  to 
this  conviction  he  accepted,  with  fourteen  of 
his  old  colleagues,  membership  in  the  board 
of  education,  of  which  he  served  for  two  years 
as  vice-president,  resigning  in  January,  1855, 
at  which  time  he  had  formed  and  begun  to 
carry  out  the  great  plan  of  an  institution  for 
free  popular  education  with  which  his  name 
is  now  forever  associated. 

Many  years  later  Mr.  Cooper  became  the 
president  of  the  Citizens'  Association  of 
New  York,  which  he  supported  with  untiring 
enthusiasm  and  lavish  expenditure,  and  which 
in  its  day  did  good  work  in  securing  for  the 
city  an  efficient  fire  department,  boards  of 
health,  docks,  and  education,  and  an  im- 
proved charter.  Mr.  Cooper  retired  in  1873, 
and  the  association  died  soon  after,  to  be 
revived  in  other  organizations,  which  have 
from  time  to  time  continued  the  perennial 
battle  for  good  government  in  New  York 
begun  by  him. 


VII 

THE   COOPER   UNION   FOR   THE  ADVANCE- 
MENT  OF    SCIENCE   AND   ART 

In  many  respects  the  industrial  conditions 
under  which  Peter  Cooper  began  his  career 
had  been  revolutionized  before  he  finished 
it.  The  apprentice  system  has  well-nigh 
passed  away;  and  the  old  freedom  with 
which  an  intelligent,  industrious,  and  ambi- 
tious young  man  could  turn  from  one  occu- 
pation to  another,  seeking  that  road  which 
offered  greatest  promise  of  preferment,  is 
greatly  hampered  by  the  modern  regime  of 
"  organized  labor,"  which,  whatever  its  ad- 
vantages, presents  its  own  peculiar  perils 
for  the  workingman.  But  it  remains  for- 
ever true  that  under  either  of  these  systems, 
or  any  others  that  can  be  evolved  or  invented, 
knowledge  is  power,  and  the  bestowal  of  it 
is  the  one  gift  which  neither  pauperizes  the 
recipient  nor  injures  the  community. 


THE  COOPER  UNION  65 

As  a  struggling  young  apprentice,  Peter 
Cooper  regarded  with  intense  sympathy  the 
needs  and  limitations  of  the  class  to  which 
he  belonged.  But  his  notion  of  a  remedy 
was  not  that  of  paternal  legislation,  or  bel- 
ligerent organization,  or  social  reconstruc- 
tion. To  his  conception  the  atmosphere  of 
personal  liberty  and  responsibility  furnished 
by  the  new  democratic  republic,  offering  free1 
scope  to  individual  endeavor  and  rewarding 
individual  merit,  was  the  best  that  could  be 
asked. 

What  he  dreamed  of  doing  was  simply  to 
assist  these  social  conditions  by  providing 
for  those  who  were  handicapped  by  circum- 
stances the  means  of  power  and  opportu- 
nity, to  be  utilized  by  their  own  assiduity. 
This  plan  included  not  only  what  he  then 
thought  to  be  the  most  effective  system 
for  intellectual  improvement,  but  also  pro- 
vision for  such  innocent  entertainment  as 
would  supersede  the  grosser  forms  of  recrea- 
tion, which  involved  the  waste  of  money  and 
health. 

Walking  up  the  Bowery  Road  —  then  the 


66  PETER  COOPER 

stage  route  to  Boston,  but  now  a  crowded 
down-town  street  —  he  selected  in  the  sub- 
urbs of  the  city  the  site  for  his  great  insti- 
tution ;  and,  as  he  accumulated  the  necessary- 
funds,  he  bought  at  intervals  lot  after  lot  at 
the  intersection  of  Third  and  Fourth  Ave- 
nues, until  he  had  acquired  the  entire  block, 
paying  for  his  latest  purchases  (made  after 
the  neighborhood  had  been  solidly  built  up 
and  had  become  a  centre  of  business)  very 
high  prices  compared  with  those  he  had  paid 
at  the  beginning.  At  last  (in  1854)  he 
commenced  the  erection  of  a  six-story  fire- 
proof building  of  stone,  brick,  and  iron.  This 
work  occupied  several  years,  and  during  its 
progress  a  period  of  great  financial  distress 
threatened  to  interrupt  it.  But  he  persisted 
in  the  undertaking,  at  great  risk  to  his  private 
business ;  and  the  building  was  finished  at  a 
cost  (including  that  of  the  land)  of  more 
than  six  hundred  and  thirty  thousand  dol- 
lars. Subsequent  gifts  from  Mr.  Cooper, 
together  with  the  legacy  provided  by  his 
will,  and  doubled  by  his  heirs,  and  still  later 
donations  from   his  family  and   immediate 


THE  COOPER  UNION  67 

relatives,  make   up   a   total  of   more  than 
double  that  amount.1 

1  Not  aU  of  this  amount  is  represented  in  permanent 
endowments,  since  large  contributions  to  cover  deficits  in 
annual  income  as  compared  with  current  expenses,  or  for 
special  repairs  and  alterations,  do  not  appear  under  that 
head.  According  to  the  balance-sheet  of  January  1, 1900, 
the  total  assets  consist  of  $1,075,428.62,  the  appraised 
value  of  the  building,  furniture,  and  apparatus ;  and  $947,- 
021.39  in  cash  on  hand  or  investments,  —  making  a  total 
of  $2,022,450.01.  Of  the  invested  sum  $953,159.30  is  in 
"  special  endowments,"  of  which  the  income  only  can  be 
expended.  This  fund  comprises  $200,000  from  Peter 
Cooper  and  $340,000  from  the  family  of  the  late  William 
Cooper,  his  brother  ;  the  remainder  is  made  up  of  smaller 
gifts  (the  chief  of  which  are  a  bequest  of  $30,000  from 
Wilson  G.  Hunt,  one  of  the  original  trustees,  and  $10,000 
each  from  Mary  Stuart,  J.  Pierpont  Morgan,  Morris  K. 
Jesup,  and  John  E.  Parsons),  and  one  of  $300,000  made  in 
December,  1899,  by  Andrew  Carnegie.  In  addition  to  the 
aggregate  thus  made  up  Hon.  Edward  Cooper,  the  son, 
and  Mr.  Abram  S.  Hewitt,  the  son-in-law  of  Peter  Cooper, 
have  undertaken  to  furnish  a  further  income  of  $10,000 
per  annum ;  and  finally,  according  to  the  41st  Annual 
Report  of  the  Trustees  (May,  1900),  the  Cooper  Union, 
as  residuary  legatee  under  the  will  of  the  late  John 
Holstead,  will  ultimately  receive  between  $200,000  and 
$300,000. 

These  recent  additions  to  the  endowment  of  the  insti- 
tution will  enable  the  trustees  to  enlarge  its  usefulness 
in  many  ways,  and  especially  (being  no  longer  dependent 
for  annual  income  upon  rents)  to  utilize  the  whole  of  the 


\ 


68  PETER  COOPER 

Up  to  the  time  when  the  building  was 
completed  Mr.  Cooper  had  taken  little  ad- 
vice as  to  the  details  of  his  project.  Its  out- 
lines in  his  mind  were  those  which  he  had  con- 
ceived a  quarter-century  before,  and  though 
he  was  doubtless  conscious  that  new  social 
and  industrial  conditions  had  intervened 
which  would  require  some  modifications  of 
his  plan,  he  had  not  formulated  such  changes. 

The  classes  which  he  wished  especially 
to  reach  were  those  who,  being  already  en- 
gaged in  earning  a  living  by  labor,  could 
scarcely  be  expected  to  take  regular  courses 
in  instruction  ;  and  the  idea  of  such  instruc- 
tion appears  to  have  been  at  the  beginning 
subordinate  in  his  mind.  He  had  a  strong 
impression  that  young  mechanics  and  ap- 
prentices, instead  of  wasting  their  time  in 
dissipation,  should  improve  their  minds  dur- 
ing the  intervals  of  labor ;  and  not  unnatu- 
rally his  first  thought  as  to  the  means  of 
such   improvement  turned  to   those  things 

building  for  educational  purposes.  Yet  the  total  endow- 
ment will  still  be  modest,  as  compared  with  that  of  many 
similar  institutions  of  later  origin. 


THE   COOPER  UNION  69 

which  had  aroused  and  stimulated  his  own 
mind.  Probably  he  did  not  realize  that  the 
mass  of  men  were  not  like  himself,  and  that 
something  more  than  mere  suggestion  or  op- 
portunity would  be  required  to  develop  the 
mental  powers  and  enlarge  the  knowledge  of 
the  "average  workingman.  However  that 
may  l?e,  the  original  vague  design  of  Mr. 
Cooper  was  something  like  this  :  — 

Ther§.  was  in  the  city  of  New  York  a 
famous  collection  of  curiosities  known  as 
Scudder's  Museum.  Barnum's  Museum 
afterwards  took  its  place ;  but  that,  too,  has 
long  since  disappeared ;  and  the  small  so- 
called  museums  now  scattered  through  the 
city  but  faintly  remind  old  inhabitants  of 
the  glories  of  Scudder's  or  Barnum's  in  their 
prime.  These  establishments  contained  all 
sorts  of  curiosities,  arranged  without  much 
reference  to  scientific  use,  —  wax-works,  his- 
torical relics,  dwarfs,  giants,  living  and 
stuffed  animals,  etc.  There  was  also  a 
lecture-room,  devoted  principally  to  moral 
melodrama ;  and  on  an  upper  floor  a  large 
room  was  occupied   by  the   cosmorama, — 


70  PETER  COOPER 

an  exhibition  of  pictures,  usually  of  note- 
worthy scenery,  foreign  cities,  etc.,  which 
were  looked  at  through  round  holes,  enhan- 
cing the  effect  of  their  illumination. 

Peter  Cooper  doubtless  often  lingered  in 
these  museums,  receiving  the  inspiration 
which  came  from  visions  of  a  world  much 
wider  than  his  individual  horizon,  from  the 
curious  and  wonderful  works  of  nature,  and 
from  the  works  of  man  in  former  times  and 
in  foreign  lands.  From  the  queer  mechani- 
cal devices  exhibited  by  inventors  to  the 
"  Happy  Family  "  and  the  cosmorama,  every- 
thing was  full  to  his  quick  sympathy  of  in- 
tellectual, moral,  or  sentimental  suggestion  ; 
and  no  doubt  he  felt,  after  an  hour  of  such 
combined  wonder  and  reflection,  a  satisfying 
sense  of  time  well  spent. 

He  wished  that  this  means  of  mental  im- 
provement and  recreation  combined  might 
be  freely  afforded  to  those  whose  scanty 
earnings  would  not  permit  them  otherwise  to 
make  frequent  use  of  it,  and  he  resolved 
that  the  museum  and  the  cosmorama  should 
be  included  in  his  institution. 


THE  COOPER  UNION  71 

Another  agency  of  which  Mr.  Cooper  had 
made  fruitful  use,  and  the  efficacy  of  which 
he  highly  appreciated,  was  conversation  and 
debate.  If  people  could  be  brought  together 
and  made  to  talk  he  thought  they  would 
learn  a  great  deal  from  each  other.  In  this 
he  had  undoubtedly  grasped  one  of  the  great 
principles  of  progress.  To  meet  and  inter- 
change our  ideas  of  books  and  by  personal 
discussions  is  indeed  the  mightiest  factor  of 
modern  improvement.  But  the  mere  meet- 
ing to  talk  about  things  unless  it  is  com- 
bined with  the  disposition  and  the  apparatus 
for  studying  things  is  but  barter  without 
production,  and  may  degenerate  to  a  barren 
exchange  of  words,  as  unprofitable  as  that 
described  in  the  Yankee  proverb, "  swapping 
jackknives  in  a  garret."  This  aspect  of  the 
truth  Mr.  Cooper  doubtless  came  to  appre- 
ciate; but  at  the  outset,  habituated  as  he 
was  to  get  ideas  from  everybody  he  met  and 
everything  he  saw,  it  seemed  to  him  that 
free  discussions  would  be  an  unmixed  benefit 
to  all,  and  he  resolved  that  his  institution 
should  contain  rooms,  devoted  to  the  several 


72  PETER  COOPER 

handicrafts,  where  the  practitioners  of  each 
could  meet  and  "  exchange  views." 

It  was  also  his  intention  that  the  lower 
part  of  the  building  he  erected  should  be  oc- 
cupied by  stores  and  offices,  the  annual  rent  of 
which  should  pay  the  running  expenses  of  the 
institution.  In  the  course  of  time  the  Cooper 
Union  came  to  need  for  full  efficiency  both 
more  money  than  this  source  would  supply 
and  more  room  than  was  left  to  it  after  sub- 
tracting the  rooms  thus  rented.  These  needs 
have  now  been  met  in  some  measure  by  fur- 
ther endowments,  so  that  before  long  the 
whole  building  will  be  devoted  to  educational 
uses.  But  the  wisdom,  at  that  time,  of  Mr. 
Cooper's  plan  has  been  vindicated  by  the 
great  work  done  with  the  modest  means 
thus  provided. 

The  building  of  the  Cooper  Union  repre- 
sented his  original  ideas.  Above  the  shops 
and  offices  to  be  rented  was  an  immense 
room  intended  for  the  museum.  A  large 
part  of  the  building  was  cut  up  into  small 
meeting-rooms  for  the  conferences  of  the 
trades ;   in  an   upper   story  another,  great 


THE  COOPER  UNION  73 

room  was  provided  for  the  eosmorama ;  and 
the  flat  roof  was  to  be  safely  inclosed  with  a 
balustrade,  so  that  on  pleasant  days  or  even- 
ings the  frequenters  of  the  institution  might 
sit  or  promenade  there,  partake  of  harmless 
refreshments,  listen  to  agreeable  music,1  and 
enjoy  the  magnificent  prospect  of  the  city 
below,  —  the  heights  beyond  the  East  River 
on  one  side,  the  Hudson  on  the  other,  and 
the  magnificent  island-studded  harbor. 

A  noteworthy  feature  of  this  scheme  was 
the  complete  obliteration  of  all  distinctions 
of  class,  creed,  race,  or  sex  among  its  bene- 
ficiaries. It  is  a  significant  fact  that  through 
nearly  half  a  century,  while  these  distinctions 
have  been  the  subjects  of  vehement  and  some- 
times bitter  social  and  political  discussion,  the 
Cooper  Union  has  gone  quietly  on  educating 
its  thousands  of  pupils  without  the  least  em- 
barrassment in  its  discipline,  and  apparently 
without  even  the  consciousness  on  the  part 
of   its  founder  or   its  trustees  that  in  this 

1  Old  New  Yorkers  will  be  reminded  of  the  closing 
lines  of  Fitz-Greene  Halleck's  poem,  — ■ 

••  And  there  is  music  twice  a  week 
On  Scudder's  balcony." 


74  PETER  COOPER 

perfect  solution  of  what  was  supposed  to  be 
a  difficult  problem  they  had  accomplished 
anything  extraordinary. 

When  Mr.  Cooper,  consulting  with  wise 
and  practical  advisers,  addressed  himself  at 
last  to  the  final  arrangement  of  details,  he 
surrendered  one  after  another  many  parts  of 
his  youthful  design.  The  name,  "  The  Cooper 
Union  for  the  Advancement  of  Science  and 
Art,"  epitomized  this  change.  His  primary 
purpose  was  unchanged;  but  he  perceived 
that  systematic  education  would  be  of  more 
value  to  the  class  he  sought  to  aid  than  mere 
amusement  or  miscellaneous  talk.  The  great 
free  reading-room  of  the  Cooper  Union  was 
substituted  for  the  museum;  the  conversa- 
tion parlors  for  the  various  trades  became 
class-rooms  for  instruction  ;  the  cosmorama 
yielded  to  lecture-halls  and  laboratories ;  and 
the  roof  was  abandoned  to  the  weather.  To 
all  these  changes,  and  to  many  other  novel- 
ties adopted  afterwards,  Mr.  Cooper  was 
reconciled  by  one  conclusive  argument ; 
namely,  the  proof  afforded  by  their  results 
that  the  Cooper  Union  was  giving  to  the  work- 


THE  COOPER  UNION  75 

ing  classes  that  which  they  needed  most  and 
most  desired.  Now  and  then  perhaps  a  sigh 
might  escape  him  for  the  dream  of  his  youth. 
I  remember  one  occasion  when  I  accom- 
panied him  to  the  roof  of  the  building,  where 
some  new  construction  was  going  on  which 
he  wished  to  inspect.  The  old  man  stood 
for  some  time  admiring  the  view  in  all  direc- 
tions, and  at  last,  recalling  how  he  had  once 
imagined  happy  crowds  enjoying  the  delights 
of  that  "  roof-garden,"  and  casting  a  mourn- 
ful glance  at  the  central  spot  where  the  band 
was  to  have  been,  he  said,  "  Sometimes  I 
think  my  first  plan  was  the  best !  "  1  But 
such  regrets  did  not  occupy  his  mind.     He 

1  There  may  have  been  more  than  a  mere  sentimental 
regret  in  his  mind  at  that  time  ;  for  his  inventive  intui- 
tion had  struck  out  half  a  century  before  an  idea  to 
which  the  slow  thought  of  his  fellows  had  not  yet  at- 
tained, —  the  plan  of  utilizing  roofs  for  the  purpose  of 
giving  to  all  classes  an  ownership  of  free  air  and  far  dis- 
tance and  boundless  sky  as  complete  as  any  landowner 
could  command  by  fencing  off  a  mountain  for  his  own 
pleasure.  As  he  looked  down  upon  the  vast  wilderness 
of  roofs  and  thought  of  the  multitude  laboring  beneath 
them  or  trudging  through  the  streets  ("  up  one  canon 
and  down  another,"  as  old  Jim  Bridger  the  scout  said  in 
St.  Louis),  igDorant  of  the  upper  sphere  within  reach,  he 


76  PETER  COOPER 

was  satisfied  to  know  that  the  institution  he 
had  founded,  building  better  than  he  knew, 
had  proved  its  fitness  by  its  success  in  the 
eager  and  grateful  use  made  of  it  by  those 
for  whose  benefit  it  was  intended  and  in  the 
actual  evidences  of  such  benefit.  Every  year 
managers  of  the  different  departments  took 
pains  to  report  to  him  instances  in  which 
students  already  earning  wages  had  increased 
their  earnings  through  the  added  knowledge 
or  skill  acquired  in  the  evening  classes  ;  and 
this  was  the  feature  of  the  annual  statements 
upon  which  he  dwelt  with  the  greatest  satis- 
faction. 

might  well  have  felt  that  one  part  of  his  original  scheme 
would  still  be  a  physical  and  moral  boon  to  the  metro- 
polis. In  fact  the  disappearance  of  the  "  vacant  lots,"  so 
numerous  in  his  youth,  and  so  freely  available  as  infor- 
mal parks  and  playgrounds,  had  created  new  necessity 
for  air  and  space.  Whether  he  consciously  recalled  the 
hanging  gardens  of  Babylon,  or  the  flat  roofs  universally 
utilized  for  social  and  domestic  purposes  in  eastern  and 
southern  countries,  I  do  not  know.  At  all  events  he  had 
seized  upon  a  similar  idea,  and  now  —  nearly  a  score  of 
years  after  his  death  —  we  are  waking  up  to  its  value. 
Even  the  Cooper  Union  building  some  day,  after  more 
pressing  needs  of  equipment  shall  have  been  satisfied, 
may  be  crowned  with  its  garden  of  rest  and  outlook. 


THE  COOPER  UNION  77 

The  charter  of  the  Cooper  Union  was 
finally  adopted  in  its  present  form  by  the 
legislature  of  the  State  of  New  York, 
April  13,  1859 ;  and  the  deed  of  trust,  exe- 
cuted in  compliance  therewith,  on  the  29th 
day  of  the  same  month,  by  Peter  Cooper 
and  his  wife,  Sarah,  conveyed  to  the  board 
of  trustees  the  title  to  "  all  that  piece  and 
parcel  of  land  bounded  on  the  west  by 
Fourth  Avenue,  on  the  north  by  Astor 
Place,  on  the  east  by  Third  Avenue,  and  on 
the  south  by  Seventh  Street,  ...  to  be  for- 
ever devoted  to  the  advancement  of  science 
and  art,  in  their  application  to  the  varied  and 
useful  purposes  of  life." 

'  Even  through  this  dry  legal  phraseology, 
it  is  not  difficult  to  discern  the  frank  and 
simple  joy  of  the  patient  enthusiast,  who 
was  at  last  able  to  speak  of  the  land  which 
he  had  laboriously  acquired,  lot  by  lot, 
through  many  years,  and  the  building  which 
he  had  raised,  stone  by  stone,  through  many 
more,  as  one  "  piece  or  parcel,"  his  to  dedi- 
cate forever. 

The  delivery  of  this  deed  to  the  board  of 


78  PETER  COOPER 

trustees  was  accompanied  with  a  long  letter, 
setting  forth  the  wishes,  hopes,  and  plans 
of  the  grantor,  in  the  formal  and  diffuse 
rhetoric  peculiar  to  his  generation,  and,  per- 
haps, too  much  contemned  by  ours.  To  say 
the  least,  we  are  no  more  warranted  in  de- 
spising the  utterances  of  noble,  self-sacrificing 
philanthropists,  because  they  are  clothed  in 
phrases  now  deemed  verbose  and  stilted, 
than  we  would  be  in  disparaging  the  deeds 
of  historic  heroes,  because  they  wore  armor 
now  antiquated  and  struck  their  doughty 
blows  with  weapons  obsolete.  When  Peter 
Cooper  wrote,  in  the  letter  now  before  me, 
"  The  great  object  I  desire  to  accomplish  by 
the  establishment  of  an  institution  devoted 
to  the  advancement  of  science  and  art  is  to 
open  the  volume  of  nature  by  the  light  of 
truth  —  so  unveiling  the  laws  and  methods 
of  Deity  that  the  young  may  see  the  beauties 
of  creation,  enjoy  its  blessings,  and  learn  to 
love  the  Being  J  from  whom  cometh  every 
good  and  perfect  gift,'  "  —  he  was  not  guilty 
of  cant,  because  cant  is  the  use  of  language 
expressing  an  emotion  which  the  user  does 


THE  COOPER  UNION  79 

not  really  feel.  And  the  same  may  be  said  of 
the  elaborate  additional  exposition,  contained 
in  this  letter,  of  the  writer's  faith  in  God  and 
man,  and  of  his  confident  hope  in  the  future 
of  his  race,  and  particularly  of  his  country. 

The  letter  shows  some  traces  still  of  his 
original  plan.     Thus,  he  writes  :  — 

"  In  order  most  effectually  to  aid  and 
encourage  the  efforts  of  youth  to  obtain  use- 
ful knowledge,  I  have  provided  the  main 
floor  of  the  large  hall  on  the  third  story  for 
a  reading-room,  literary  exchange,  and  scien- 
tific collections — the  walls  around  that  floor 
to  be  arranged  for  the  reception  of  books, 
maps,  paintings,  and  other  objects  of  interest. 
And  when  a  sufficient  collection  of  the  works 
of  art,  science,  and  nature  can  be  obtained, 
I  propose  that  glass  cases  shall  be  arranged 
around  the  walls  of  the  gallery  of  the  said 
room,  forming  alcoves  around  the  entire 
floor  for  the  preservation  of  the  same.  In 
the  window  spaces  I  propose  to  arrange  such 
cosmoramic  and  other  views  as  will  exhibit 
in  the  clearest  and  most  forcible  light  the 
true  philosophy  of  life." 


80  PETER  COOPER 

Other  characteristic  paragraphs  are  here 
quoted,  —  the  whole  letter  being  too  long 
for  full  republication. 

"  To  manifest  the  deep  interest  and  sym- 
pathy I  feel  in  all  that  can  advance  the  hap- 
piness and  better  the  condition  of  the  female 
portion  of  the  community,  and  especially  of 
those  who  are  dependent  on  honest  labor  for 
support,  I  desire  the  trustees  to  appropriate 
two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  yearly  to  assist 
such  pupils  of  the  female  school  of  design 
as  shall,  in  their  careful  judgment,  by  their 
efforts  and  sacrifices  in  the  performance  of 
duty  to  parents  or  to  those  that  Providence 
has  made  dependent  on  them  for  support, 
merit  and  require  such  aid.  My  reason  for 
this  requirement  is  not  so  much  to  reward 
as  to  encourage  the  exercise  of  heroic  vir- 
tues that  often  shine  in  the  midst  of  the 
greatest  suffering  and  obscurity  without  so 
much  as  being  noticed  by  the  passing 
throng. 

"  In  order  to  better  the  condition  of  wo- 
men and  to  widen  the  sphere  of  female  em- 
ployment, I  have  provided  seven  rooms  to 


THE  COOPER  UNION  81 

be  forever  devoted  to  a  female  school  of 
design,  and  I  desire  the  trustees  to  appro- 
priate out  of  the  rents  of  the  building  fifteen 
hundred  dollars  annually  towards  meeting 
the  expenses  of  said  school. 

"  It  is  the  ardent  wish  of  my  heart  that 
this  school  of  design  may  be  the  means  of 
raising  to  competence  and  comfort  thousands 
of  those  that  might  otherwise  struggle 
through  a  life  of  poverty  and  suffering.  .  .  . 

"  Desiring,  as  I  do,  to  use  every  means  to 
render  this  institution  useful  through  all 
coming  time,  and  believing  that  editors  of 
the  public  press  have  it  in  their  power  to 
exert  a  greater  influence  on  the  community 
for  good  than  any  other  class  of  men  of 
equal  number,  it  is  therefore  my  sincere 
desire  that  editors  be  earnestly  invited  to 
become  members  of  the  society  of  arts  to 
be  connected  with  this  institution.  .  .  . 

"  It  is  my  desire,  also,  that  the  students 
shall  have  the  use  of  one  of  the  large  rooms 
(to  be  assigned  by  the  trustees)  for  the  pur- 
pose of  useful  debates.  I  desire  and  deem 
it  best  to  direct  that  all  these  lectures  and 


82  PETER  COOPER 

debates  shall  be  exclusive  of  theological  and 
party  questions,  and  shall  have  for  their 
constant  object  the  causes  that  operate 
around  and  within  us,  and  the  means  neces- 
sary and  most  appropriate  to  remove  the 
physical  and  moral  evils  that  afflict  our  city, 
our  country,  and  humanity."  .  .  . 

Other  paragraphs  indicate  his  plan  that 
the  students  shall,  in  the  first  instance,  frame 
the  rules  which  shall  control  the  discipline 
of  the  institution.     Thus  he  says  :  — 

"  It  is  my  desire,  and  I  hereby  ordain, 
that  a  strict  conformity  to  rules  deliberately 
formed  by  a  vote  of  the  majority  of  the 
students,  and  approved  by  the  trustees,  shall 
forever  be  an  indispensable  requisite  for 
continuing  to  enjoy  the  benefits  of  this  insti- 
tution. I  now  most  earnestly  entreat  each 
and  every  one  of  the  students  of  this  insti- 
tution, through  all  coming  time,  to  whom  I 
have  intrusted  this  great  responsibility  of 
framing  laws  for  the  regulation  of  their  con- 
duct in  their  connection  with  the  institution, 
and  by  which  any  of  the  members  may  lose 
its  privileges,  to  remember  how  frail  we  are, 


THE  COOPER  UNION  83 

and  how  liable  to  err  when  we  come  to  sit 
in  judgment  on  the  faults  of  others,  and 
how  much  the  circumstances  of  our  birth, 
our  education,  and  the  society  and  country 
where  we  have  been  born  and  brought  up, 
have  had  to  do  in  forming  us  and  making  us 
what  we  are." 

In  this  scheme  Mr.  Cooper  anticipated 
the  plan  of  self-government  now  followed  in 
some  of  our  colleges;  and  while  he  ex- 
pected too  much  of  the  students  of  the 
Cooper  Union,  and  was  himself  afterwards 
obliged  to  consent  to  the  restriction  of  their 
autonomy,  it  may  be  fairly  said  that  the 
spirit  of  his  hope  and  exhortation  has  never 
ceased  to  be  felt ;  and,  to  the  great  honor 
of  the  Cooper  Union,  it  may  be  recorded 
that  questions  of  discipline  have  been  well- 
nigh  unknown  within  its  walls. 

This  noble  trust  was  accepted  by  a  body 
of  men  who  have  discharged  it  with  un- 
wearied fidelity,  zeal  and  wisdom.  The 
original  board  consisted  of  Mr.  Cooper,  his 
son  Edward  Cooper,  his  son-in-law  Abram 
S.  Hewitt,  and  John  E.  Parsons,  Wilson  G. 


84  PETER  COOPER 

Hunt,  and  Daniel  F.  Tiemann.  Three  of 
these,  Messrs.  Cooper,  Hewitt,  and  Tiemann, 
have  been  mayors  of  the  city  of  New  York. 
All  of  them  were  well-known  and  eminent 
citizens,  burdened  with  the  duties  of  active 
business ;  and  the  time  they  gave  so  freely 
to  the  management  of  the  Cooper  Union  was 
not  the  superfluity  of  leisure.  The  difficulty 
with  "  business  men "  too  often  is,  that, 
when  nominally  charged  with  the  adminis- 
tration of  organized  charities,  they  slight 
the  work  because  they  have  not  time  to  at- 
tend to  it.  But  the  United  States  can  show 
not  a  few  instances  in  which  the  affairs  of 
religious,  educational,  or  benevolent  institu- 
tions are  carefully  managed  by  the  active 
directors  of  great  private  enterprises ;  and 
their  management,  when  it  is  thus  thorough, 
is  generally  much  better  than  that  of  literary 
or  philanthropic  amateurs.  This  is  conspic- 
uously shown  in  the  history  of  the  Cooper 
Union. * 

1  Of  the  original  board,  Peter  Cooper  was  the  first  to 
pass  away.  Mr.  Hunt  and  Mr.  Tiemann  have  since  died, 
and  Mr.  R.  Fulton  Cutting  has  been  elected  a  trustee. 
The  other  vacancies  have  not  been  filled. 


THE  COOPER  UNION  85 

This  is  not  the  place  for  a  detailed  ac- 
count of  the  development  of  the  Cooper 
Union,  or  even  of  its  present  scope  and  pro- 
spective operations.  Such  an  account  would 
worthily  occupy  a  separate  volume  ;  for  the 
institution,  in  the  hands  of  its  wise  direct- 
ors, was  a  pioneer  and  model  in  many  re- 
spects in  which  later  enterprises,  with  larger 
means,  have,  perhaps,  surpassed  it.  I  must 
content  myself  here  with  brief  mention  of  a 
few  particulars. 

The  immense  free  reading-room,  with  its 
average  daily  attendance  of  nearly  1500  to 
2000  persons,  was  Mr.  Cooper's  special 
delight ;  and  well  it  might  be  so ;  for  the 
sight  is  one  almost  without  a  parallel  —  not 
in  the  architecture,  size,  or  furnishing  of  the 
place,  but  in  the  extent  and  constancy  of  its 
use  by  the  public.  Entrance  is  free  to  all 
who  are  not  unclean,  intoxicated,  or  disor- 
derly. In  the  main,  the  privileges  thus  given 
are  not  abused,  but  occasionally  the  evils  al- 
most inseparable  from  so  large  an  attendance 
have  been  felt.  At  one  time,  the  curator' 
earnestly  represented  to  the  trustees  the  ne- 


86  PETER  COOPER 

cessity  of  doing  something  to  check  the  mu- 
tilation of  books  —  a  practice  which  public 
librarians  know  well  as  one  of  their  most 
troublesome  foes.  It  appeared  that  some 
unknown  persons,  who  combined  a  love  of 
the  beautiful  in  language  with  a  barbaric 
ignorance  of  it  in  conduct,  were  accustomed 
to  slash  out  with  their  penknives  favorite 
passages  of  poetry  for  preservation,  treating 
in  this  matter  newspapers  and  books  alike. 
It  was  found  difficult  to  keep  whole  the  vol- 
umes of  Tennyson  and  Longfellow.  But  a 
more  frequent  and  injurious  practice  was 
the  cutting  out  of  plates  from  illustrated 
books.  This  was  not  for  love  of  art,  as  the 
other  for  love  of  poetry.  The  object  was  to 
sell  such  engravings  for  two  or  three  cents 
each  to  the  print-shops  in  the  city,  where 
they  were  bought  by  refined  amateurs,  for 
the  purpose  of  "  illustrating "  special  vol- 
umes. This  fashionable  hobby  has  been  the 
indirect  cause  of  the  ruin  of  many  a  choice 
book ;  and  buyers  of  fine  old  editions  are  well 
aware  that  they  must  look  well  to  their  bar- 
gains, lest  they  find  that  the  thief,  at  the  bid- 


THE  COOPER  UNION  8T 

ding  of  the  "  collector,"  has  plundered  the  vol- 
umes of  the  plates  which  once  adorned  them. 
When  this  subject  came  up  for  discussion 
in  the  board  of  trustees,  Mr.  Cooper  was 
so  full  of  pity  for  the  poor  fellows,  who 
were  obliged  to  sell  stolen  engravings  at 
two  cents  a  piece  to  keep  body  and  soul 
together,  that  he  could  scarcely  be  brought 
to  take  a  severe  view  of  the  offense.  Nor 
was  he  willing  (and  in  this  his  fellow-trus- 
tees agreed  with  him)  to  impose  any  restric- 
tion or  censorship  upon  admittance  to  the 
reading-room.  Even  if  the  books  suffered, 
the  room  must  continue  to  be  free.  The 
great  mass  of  well-behaved  people  must  not 
be  annoyed  by  measures  intended  to  exclude 
a  few  rogues.  The  result  vindicated  the 
sagacity,  as  well  as  the  charity,  of  this  view. 
The  officers  in  charge,  not  being  permitted 
to  adopt  any  sweeping  measures  of  preven- 
tion, simply  redoubled  their  vigilance,  and 
finally  caught  one  or  two  offenders  and 
"  made  examples  of  them; "  and  the  nuisance 
was  immediately  abated,  though  perhaps  not 
entirely  and  permanently  abolished. 


88  PETER  COOPER 

The  report  of  1900,  after  mentioning  the 
great  (legitimate)  wear  and  tear  of  the 
books,  of  which  12,000  had  to  be  re-bound, 
adds : — 

"  The  decorum  of  the  visitors  has  been 
excellent,  and  it  is  remarkable,  in  view  of 
such  a  very  large  number  of  persons  visit- 
ing the  room,  that  so  few  mutilations  and 
injuries  occur  to  the  periodicals  and  books, 
and  that  so  few  books,  probably  not  more 
than  half  a  dozen  in  the  course  of  a  year, 
and  those  of  small  consequence,  are  stolen." 

It  seems  then,  after  all,  that  Peter  Coop- 
er's faith  in  the  people  was  justified. 

The  great  hall  in  the  basement  is  an- 
other noteworthy  feature,  and  worthy  of 
wider  imitation  than  it  has  yet  received/ 
Such  a  hall,  if  located  upstairs  in  such  a 
building,  would  have  been  open  to  three  ob- 
jections :  it  would  have  monopolized,  for  oc- 
casional use  only,  space  which  was  required 
for  constant  use  ;  it  would  have  been  intol- 
erably noisy,  by  reason  of  the  roar  and  rat- 
tle in  the  streets  which  surround  the  build- 
ing on  all  sides ;  and  it  would  have  been 


THE  COOPER  UNION  89 

dangerous,  as  all  such  places  are,  when  great 
audiences  must  make  their  exit  by  going 
down  stairs.  Nothing  has  ever  been  in- 
vented that  will  prevent  people  from  being 
crushed  and  trampled  when  they  are  crowd- 
ing down  a  stairway.  In  all  these  respects, 
the  great  hall  of  the  Cooper  Union  is  admir- 
able. It  occupies  space  not  otherwise  val- 
uable. It  is  quiet,  and  acoustically  perfect. 
The  means  of  exit  and  entrance  are  ample 
and  safe.  Even  in  case  of  an  unreasoning 
panic,  there  is  little  danger  that  a  crowd, 
tumbling  up  the  stone  stairways  to  the 
street,  would  cause  the  horrible  maiming 
and  killing  which  so  often  attend  the  efforts 
of  a  frightened  multitude  to  get  down.  Fi- 
nally, the  ventilation  is  excellent,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  natural  or  automatic  ven- 
tilation of  such  a  large,  low  basement  room 
could  not  be  expected,  and  consequently 
mechanical  ventilation  by  means  of  a  large 
fan,  run  by  steam  power,  was  provided.  The 
efficiency  of  this  system  has  sometimes  been 
severely  tested.  On  one  occasion,  during 
a  scientific  lecture,  the  experimental  illustra- 


90  PETER  COOPER 

tions  of  which  were  on  a  large  and  imposing 
scale,  the  learned  professor  on  the  platform 
had  the  misfortune  to  crack  an  immense 
glass  jar?  in  which  he  was  exhibiting  the 
brilliant  combustion  of  phosphorus  in  oxy- 
gen gas.  The  white  fumes  of  phosphorous 
acid  floated  out  into  the  air,  and  began  to 
diffuse  themselves  through  the  hall  towards 
the  ventilation  outlets  at  the  sides  and  rear. 
To  one  who  knew  the  irritating  nature  of 
these  fumes  it  seemed  inevitable  that  the 
hall  must  be  emptied  of  its  crowded  audi- 
ence in  a  few  minutes.  Already  coughing 
had  begun  on  the  front  seats,  when  Mr. 
Hewitt,  who  was  seated  on  the  platform, 
quickly  rose,  and  pulling  a  cord,  reversed 
the  currents  of  ventilation  and  opened  a 
new  outlet  into  the  street,  behind  and  above 
the  platform.  The  curling  clouds  of  vapor 
paused,  wheeled,  and  retreated,  and  in  an- 
other minute  the  air  was  perfectly  pure. 
The  lecturer  had  not  even  been  interrupted. 
It  was  a  beautiful  and  timely  "  experiment " 
not  on  the  programme,  and,  to  use  the  words 
of  one  who  was  present,  "It  was  just  the 


THE  COOPER  UNION  91 

sort  of  thing  to  please  Peter  Cooper  to  the 
bottom  of  his  soul." 

The  great  hall  was  dedicated  from  the 
beginning  to  free  speech.  Peter  Cooper 
may  have  overestimated  the  value  of  mere 
talk.  As  I  have  already  told,  it  was  his 
first  notion  that  conversation  and  discussion 
were  the  chief  things  required  in  education. 
He  came  to  see  that  study,  instruction,  and 
training  were  equally  essential,  but  he  never 
surrendered  his  faith  in  free  speech ;  and 
the  great  hall  was  at  the  service  of  all  sects, 
parties,  and  classes,  religious,  philosophical, 
political,  scientific,  literary,  or  philanthropic. 
It  has  been  the  scene  of  many  memorable 
meetings  and  addresses.  But  nothing  in  its 
history  has  been  more  useful  and  noteworthy 
than  the  series  of  free  popular  lectures  which 
were  given,  as  part  of  the  operations  of  the 
Cooper  Union,  within  its  walls.  These  lec- 
tures began  in  1868,  and  continued  until 
they  were  adopted  by  the  city  as  part  of  the 
general  scheme  of  free  lectures  which  has 
been  so  successful  during  the  last  few  years. 
In  awarding  due  praise  to  the  promoters 


92  PETER  COOPER 

and  managers  of  this  plan,  it  should  not  be 
forgotten  that  the  Cooper  Union  inaugurated 
it,  and  maintained  it  for  many  years,  dur- 
ing which  the  free  Saturday  night  popular 
lectures  in  its  great  hall  were  the  only  ones 
of  their  kind.  They  covered  many  sciences 
and  arts,  chronicles  of  travel  and  themes  of 
history  and  literature.  The  most  eminent 
authors,  teachers,  investigators,  travelers, 
and  orators  of  the  generation  were  comprised 
in  the  list  of  lecturers ;  and  many  of  them 
performed  this  service  without  other  reward 
than  the  consciousness  of  contributing  to  a 
noble  charity,  and  the  evident  gratitude  of 
the  vast  and  eagerly  attentive  audience. 

Mr.  Cooper  loved  to  attend  these  Satur- 
day evening  lectures,  and  an  arm-chair  was 
always  ready  for  him  on  the  platform. 
Many  a  speaker  on  that  platform  has  been 
surprised  by  an  untimely  outburst  of  applause 
and  has  turned  to  discover  the  cause  in  the 
entrance  of  the  beloved  founder.  Often 
the  subject  of  the  evening  was  beyond  his 
experience  or  knowledge,  but  that  made  no 
difference  in  his  respectful  attention,  or  in 


THE  COOPER  UNION  93 

the  benign  satisfaction  with  which  he  con- 
templated the  attentive  audience,  and  real- 
ized that  they  were  receiving  benefit.  I  have 
often  felt  that  the  scene  exhibited  almost 
every  Saturday  night  for  many  years  during 
the  latest  period  of  his  life  could  be  equaled 
only  by  the  spectacle  presented  at  Ephesus, 
where  the  aged  St.  John  the  Divine  fronted 
the  congregation  of  loving  believers,  always 
with  his  one  last  message,  "  Little  children, 
love  one  another." 

But  sometimes  the  old  man  would  be  in- 
tensely interested  and  aroused  by  the  lecture. 
I  remember  such  an  occasion,  when  I  was  my- 
self the  lecturer,  and  had  been  laying  down, 
with  due  scientific  decorum  and  diagrams,  the 
"  law  of  storms."  At  the  close  of  the  lec- 
ture, Mr.  Cooper  arose,  advanced  to  the 
front,  and  gave  a  vivid  and  animated  de- 
scription of  a  whirlwind  which  he  had  wit- 
nessed some  seventy  years  before,  which  was 
received  with  rapt  attention  and  tremen- 
dous applause.  The  lecture  was  undoubt- 
edly eclipsed  in  interest  by  this  unexpected 
after-piece ;    but   the   lecturer   was    amply 


94  PETER  COOPER 

compensated  by  his  triumph  in  having  thus 
stirred  the  spirit  and  aroused  the  recollec- 
tions of  the  dear  old  founder. 

With  regard  to  the  various  schools  and 
classes  of  the  Cooper  Union,  it  must  suffice 
to  say  briefly  that  under  the  elastic  and 
comprehensive  plan  of  the  deed  of  trust, 
two  objects  were  constantly  kept  in  view  by 
the  trustees.  In  the  first  place,  a  complete 
four  years'  course  was  always  maintained, 
for  the  benefit  of  those  who  could  afford  the 
time  and  who  felt  the  need  of  such  training. 
In  the  second  place,  classes  were  instituted 
in  such  special  departments  as  were  most 
likely  to  be  useful  and  most  evidently  in  de- 
mand ;  and  with  regard  to  these  the  demand 
and  the  evidence  of  usefulness  were  followed 
as  guides  in  determining  the  extent  of  the 
facilities  offered,  up  to  the  capacity  and 
means  of  the  institution. 

De  Morgan,  in  his  "  Budget  of  Para- 
doxes," tells  of  an  old  fellow  who,  wishing 
to  have  a  chair  that  would  fit  him  perfectly, 
sat  for  a  while  on  a  mass  of  shoemaker's 
wax,  which  he  then  carried  to  a  worker  in 


THE  COOPER  UNION  95 

wood,  and  instructed  him  to  "  make  a  seat 
like  that !  "  This  homely  illustration  indi- 
cates the  manner  in  which  the  special  classes 
of  the  Cooper  Union  have  been  established, 
enlarged,  and  regulated,  to  meet  the  evi- 
dent demands  of  its  constituency.  It  is 
pleasant  to  know  that  the  future  means  and 
sphere  of  the  institution  will  be  enlarged 
under  the  same  wise  management. 


VIII 

NATIONAL   POLITICS 

Peter  Cooper's  prominent  activity  in 
national  politics  belongs  to  two  periods,  — 
that  of  the  war  for  the  Union,  and  that  of 
the  subsequent  controversies  over  questions 
of  financial  policy. 

As  has  been  explained,  he  felt  his  life  to  be 
peculiarly  identified  with  that  of  the  nation 
born  with  him  ;  and  the  idea  that  this  nation 
should  be  destroyed  in  the  midst  of  its  tri- 
umphant progress  was  profoundly  abhorrent 
to  him.  Like  many  other  patriots,  he  was 
ready  to  save  the  Union  by  a  compromise,  if 
that  were  practicable.  He  advocated  the 
purchase  and  liberation  by  the  government 
of  all  the  slaves  in  the  United  States ;  he 
promoted  a  "  peace  conference  "  on  the  very 
eve  of  the  war.  But  when  South  Carolina 
had  formally  seceded  and  the  gauntlet  had 


NATIONAL  POLITICS  97 

been  cast  at  the  feet  of  national  authority,  his 
course  was  not  uncertain.  He  was  a  repre- 
sentative of  the  New  York  Chamber  of  Com- 
merce in  the  deputation  of  thirty  leading 
citizens  of  New  York  which  visited  Wash- 
ington in  order  to  discover  what  plan  Mr. 
Buchanan  (then  still  President)  had  in 
view.  They  got  no  satisfaction  from  the 
President,  but  assured  themselves  of  the 
firm  loyalty  of  Mr.  Seward,  then  Senator 
from  New  York. 

A  few  weeks  later  the  bombardment  of 
Fort  Sumter  put  an  end  to  all  projects  of 
compromise.  At  the  memorable  mass  meet- 
ing held  in  Union  Square,  New  York,  shortly 
after  the  receipt  of  this  news,  Peter  Cooper, 
then  seventy  years  old,  was  among  the  first 
to  mount  the  platform.  His  familiar  white 
hairs  and  kindly  face  were  recognized  by  the 
crowd,  which  vociferously  called  for  a  speech 
from  him.  Stepping  to  the  front,  he  uttered 
a  few  ringing  sentences  which  sounded  the 
keynote  of  the  meeting.  I  quote  but  one  or 
two  :  — 

"  We  are  contending  with  an  enemy  not 


98  PETER  COOPER 

only  determined  on  our  destruction  as  a  na- 
tion, but  to  build  on  our  ruins  a  government 
devoted  with  all  its  power  to  maintain,  ex- 
tend, and  perpetuate  a  system  in  itself  re- 
volting to  all  the  best  feelings  of  humanity, 
—  an  institution  that  enables  thousands  to 
sell  their  own  children  into  hopeless  bond- 


"  Shall  it  succeed  ?  You  say  '  No  ! '  and 
I  unite  with  you  in  your  decision.  We  can- 
not allow  it  to  succeed.  We  should  spend 
our  lives,  our  property,  and  leave  the  land 
itself  a  desolation  before  such  an  institution 
should  triumph  over  the  free  people  of  this 
country.  .   .  . 

"  Let  us,  therefore,  unite  to  sustain  the 
government  by  every  means  in  our  power,  to 
arm  and  equip  in  the  shortest  possible  time 
an  army  of  the  best  men  that  can  be  found 
in  the  country." 

From  that  day  on  his  patriotism  never 
doubted  or  faltered.  When  the  war  loan 
was  announced  he  was  the  first  man  at  the 
door  of  the  subtreasury  in  New  York  wait- 
ing to  make  payment  over  the  counter  of 


NATIONAL  POLITICS  99 

all  the  money  he  had  been  able  to  collect 
without  business  disaster.  "  In  those  days," 
says  a  friend,  "  whenever  he  had  nothing 
else  to  do,  he  would  go  down  to  the  recruit- 
ing office  and  put  in  a  substitute."  It  is 
estimated  that  he  must  have  sent,  first  and 
last,  about  a  score  of  soldiers  to  serve  for  him 
under  the  flag. 

From  the  first  he  urged  the  emancipation 
and  enlistment  of  the  Southern  negroes,  — 
a  policy  which  was  ultimately  adopted  with 
successful  results ;  and  when  in  1864,  at  the 
darkest  hour  of  the  struggle,  there  was  dan- 
ger of  a  fatal  compromise,  he  actively  pro- 
moted that  great  mass  meeting  in  the  hall  of 
the  Cooper  Union  which  marked  the  turning- 
point  of  the  struggle,  carried  the  State  of 
New  York  for  Lincoln,  and  secured  the  tri- 
umph of  the  Union. 

After  the  war  was  over  he  presided  at  an- 
other meeting,  called  to  favor  aid  to  the  dis- 
abled soldiers  of  the  nation ;  and  the  following 
paragraph  quoted  from  his  remarks  on  that 
occasion  forms  a  fitting  close  to  this  brief 
notice  of  his  patriotic  activity :  — 


100  PETER  COOPER 

"  If  we  required  a  stronger  stimulus  to 
urge  us  to  perform  our  duty,  we  have  only 
to  turn  our  thoughts  back  to  that  fearful 
day  when  the  armies  of  rebellion  had  entered 
Pennsylvania  with  the  intent  to  subjugate 
the  North  to  their  domination.  Had  they 
been  successful,  they  would  have  gloried  in 
making  us  pay  for  the  loss  of  their  slaves 
and  the  expenses  of  their  war.  I  trust  that 
the  government  will  not  hesitate  to  tax  my 
property  and  the  property  of  every  other 
man  enough  to  provide  for  the  comfort  of 
our  disabled  soldiers  and  the  families  de- 
pendent on  them  for  support." 

In  the  financial  controversies  which  accom- 
panied and  followed  the  period  of  u  recon- 
struction "  after  the  war,  and  were  involved 
in  the  payment  and  adjustment  of  the  na- 
tional debt,  Mr.  Cooper  appeared  as  an  ad- 
vocate of  the  "  Greenback  "  party,  and  did 
not  seem  to  realize  that  this  was  a  complete 
reversal  of  his  earlier  position  as  a  "  hard- 
money  "  Democrat.  I  think  the  clue  to  this 
change  may  be  found  in  his  recollection  of 
the  war  waged  by  Andrew  Jackson  on  the 


NATIONAL  POLITICS  101 

i 

United  States  Bank,  and  a  vague  feeling 
that  the  national  banking  system  instituted 
by  Secretary  Chase  was  open  to  similar  ob- 
jections. To  this  may  be  added  his  growing 
inclination  in  favor  of  "  paternal  govern- 
ment,"—  which  in  a  man  so  thoroughly 
self-supporting  and  self-reliant  can  be  ex- 
plained only  by  the  fact  that  his  personal 
philanthropy  overbalanced  his  political  phi- 
losophy ;  that  he  became  more  anxious  to 
relieve  the  distress  he  saw  than  to  question 
the  wisdom  of  measures  taken  for  that  pur- 
pose. Two  things  are  certain:  first,  that 
Mr.  Cooper's  motives  in  his  later  political 
course  were  thoroughly  pure  and  unselfish ; 
and  secondly,  that  his  utterances  and  publi- 
cations in  this  connection  show  him  to  be 
dealing  with  subjects  which  he  did  not  un- 
derstand. This  statement  is  made  without 
regard  to  the  merits  of  the  controversy,  or 
the  strength  of  the  arguments  contributed 
to  it  by  others.  The  simple  truth  is  that 
Mr.  Cooper  was  too  pld  to  make  original 
investigation  of  such  questions,  intelligently 
weighing  all  the  modern  conditions  of  indus- 


102  PETER  COOPER 

try  and  commerce,  in  which  he  was  no  longer 
an  active  participant.  He  accepted  in  1876 
the  nomination  of  the  Greenback  party  for 
the  presidency;  but  the  issue  was  already 
practically  dead,  and  he  received  but  81,740 
votes  out  of  a  total  of  8,412,833  cast.  Un- 
daunted by  this  defeat,  he  continued  to  utter 
his  views.  Those  who  wish  to  study  them 
in  detail  may  consult  the  volume  "  Ideas  for 
a  Science  of  Good  Government  in  Addresses, 
Letters,  and  Articles  on  a  Strictly  National 
Currency,  Tariff,  and  Civil  Service,"  which 
he  issued  at  the  age  of  ninety-two,  in  the 
last  year  of  his  life.  His  own  summary  of 
his  position,  given  on  page  212  of  this  book, 
shows  that  he  desired  a  national  legal-tender 
paper  currency,  irredeemable  in  coin,  but 
"interconvertible"  with  government  bonds, 
and  regulated  bylaw  as  to  volume  per  capita ; 
a  "discriminating"  protective  tariff,  "help- 
ful to  all  the  industries  of  the  country,  where 
the  raw  material  and  the  labor  can  be  fur- 
nished by  our  own  people  ;  "  and  a  civil  ser- 
vice divorced  from  party  politics,  based  on 


NATIONAL  POLITICS  103 

personal  fitness,  with  tenure  of  office  during 
good  behavior,  moderate  salaries,  and  pen- 
sions for  the  aged  and  sick,  and  provision 
for  widows  and  orphans. 


IX 

THE   END 

In  1874,  at  the  age  of  eighty-three,  Mr. 
Cooper  said  at  a  reception  given  in  his 
honor  :  — 

"  When  I  was  born,  New  York  contained 
27,000  inhabitants.  The  upper  limits  of  the 
city  were  at  Chambers  Street.  Not  a  single 
free  school,  either  by  day  or  night,  existed. 
General  Washington  had  just  entered  upon 
his  first  term  as  President  of  the  United  States, 
the  whole  annual  expenditures  of  which  did  not 
exceed  $2,500,000,  being  about  sixty  cents 
per  head  of  the  population.  Not  a  single 
steam  engine  had  yet  been  built  or  erected 
on  the  American  continent ;  and  the  people 
were  clad  in  homespun,  and  were  character- 
ized by  the  simple  virtues  and  habits  which 
are  usually  associated  with  that  primitive 
garb.  I  need  not  tell  you  what  the  country 
now  is,  and  what  the  habits  and  the  gar- 


THE   END  105 

ments  of  its  people  now  are,  or  that  the 
expenditure,  per  capita,  of  the  general  gov- 
ernment has  increased  fifteen-fold.  But  I 
have  witnessed  and  taken  a  deep  interest  in 
every  step  of  the  marvellous  development 
and  progress  which  have  characterized  this 
century  beyond  all  the  centuries  which  have 
gone  before. 

"Measured  by  the  achievements  of  the 
years  I  have  seen,  I  am  one  of  the  oldest 
men  who  have  ever  lived  ;  but  I  do  not  feel 
old,  and  I  propose  to  give  you  the  receipt 
by  which  I  have  preserved  my  youth. 

"  I  have  always  given  a  friendly  welcome  to 
new  ideas,  and  I  have  endeavored  not  to  feel 
too  old  to  learn ;  and  thus,  though  I  stand 
here  with  the  snows  of  so  many  winters 
upon  my  head,  my  faith  in  human  nature, 
my  belief  in  the  progress  of  man  to  a  better 
social  condition,  and  especially  my  trust  in 
the  ability  of  men  to  establish  and  maintain 
self-government,  are  as  fresh  and  as  young 
as  when  I  began  to  travel  the  path  of  life. 

"  While  I  have  always  recognized  that  the 
object  of  business  is  to  make  money  in  an 


106  PETER  COOPER 

honorable  manner,  I  have  endeavored  to 
remember  that  the  object  of  life  is  to  do 
good.  Hence  I  have  been  ready  to  engage 
in  all  new  enterprises,  and,  without  incur- 
ring debt,  to  risk  in  their  promotion  the 
means  which  I  had  acquired,  provided  they 
seemed  to  me  calculated  to  advance  the  gen- 
eral good.  This  will  account  for  my  early 
attempt  to  perfect  the  steam  engine,  for  my 
attempt  to  construct  the  first  American 
locomotive,  for  my  connection  with  the  tele- 
graph in  a  course  of  efforts  to  unite  our 
country  with  the  European  world,  and  for 
my  recent  efforts  to  solve  the  problem  of 
economical  steam  navigation  on  the  canals ; 
to  all  of  which  you  have  so  kindly  referred. 
It  happens  to  but  few  men  to  change  the 
current  of  human  progress,  as  it  did  to  Watt, 
to  Fulton,  to  Stephenson,  and  to  Morse  ;  but 
most  men  may  be  ready  to  welcome  laborers 
to  a  new  field  of  usefulness,  and  to  clear  the 
road  for  their  progress. 

"  This  I  have  tried  to  do,  as  well  in  the 
perfecting  and  execution  of  their  ideas  as  in 
making  such  provision  as  my  means  have  per- 


THE  END  107 

mitted  for  the  proper  education  of  the  young 
mechanics  and  citizens  of  my  native  city,  in 
order  to  fit  them  for  the  reception  of  new 
ideas,  social,  mechanical,  and  scientific  — 
hoping  thus  to  economize  and  expand  the 
intellectual  as  well  as  the  physical  forces, 
and  provide  a  larger  fund  for  distribution 
among  the  various  classes  which  necessarily 
make  up  the  total  of  society.  If  our  lives 
shall  be  such  that  we  shall  receive  the  glad 
welcome  of  '  Well  done,  good  and  faithful 
servant,'  we  shall  then  know  that  we  have 
not  lived  in   vain." 

For  nine  years  after  this  utterance  he 
continued  the  peaceful  and  happy  life  which 
it  describes.  When  the  end  came,  it  was 
quiet  and  painless.  Surrounded  by  his  chil- 
dren and  grandchildren,  and  whispering 
with  almost  his  last  breath  the  desire  for  an 
increase  of  his  bequest  to  that  other  well- 
beloved  child,  the  Cooper  Union,  he  "  fell  on 
sleep,"  April  4,  1883. 

On  the  day  of  his  funeral  New  York  city 
presented  an  almost  unexampled  spectacle. 
All  Soul's  Unitarian  Church,  in  which  his 


108  PETER  COOPER 

body  was  deposited,  early  in  the  morning 
was  thronged  with  a  mighty  multitude,  pass- 
ing in  procession  to  look  upon  the  beloved 
face.  Eighteen  young  men  from  the  Cooper 
Union  surrounded  it,  as  a  guard  of  honor. 
A  body  of  3500  students  of  that  institution, 
of  both  sexes,  marched  by,  casting  flowers 
upon  the  coffin,  and  followed  by  delegations 
from  all  the  municipal  and  charitable  organ- 
izations of  the  city,  and  by  uncounted  mul- 
titudes, whose  relation  to  the  beloved  phi- 
lanthropist was  not  official  or  representative, 
but  simply  personal. 

The  busiest  streets  of  New  York,  through 
which  the  funeral  procession  passed  on  its 
way  to  Greenwood  Cemetery,  beyond  the 
East  River,  were  closed  to  business  and 
hung  in  black.  The  flags  on  all  public 
buildings,  and  on  the  ships  in  the  harbor, 
were  at  half-mast.  The  bells  of  all  churches 
were  tolled.  The  whole  city  mourned,  as  it 
had  not  done  since,  eighty  years  before,  the 
funeral  procession  of  George  Washington 
moved  through  its  streets. 

If  we  seek,  without  affectionate  prejudice, 


THE   END  109 

to  discover  the  cause  of  this  universal  grief, 
affection,  and  admiration,  we  shall  find,  I 
think,  that  it  lies  chiefly  in  two  circum- 
stances; namely,  the  character  of  Peter 
Cooper  as  a  lover  of  his  kind,  and  the  op- 
portunity afforded  him  by  his  long  life,  not 
only  to  prove  that  character,  but  to  become 
personally  known  to  many  thousands  of 
those  whom  he  sought  unselfishly  to  serve. 
Few  persons  except  military  commanders 
have  such  an  opportunity.  The  philanthro* 
pists  who  labor  in  secret,  no  matter  with 
what  noble  motive,  and  do  not  come  face  to 
face  with  their  beneficiaries,  may  win  the 
applause  of  posterity,  but  cannot  expect  to 
receive  the  immediate  and  personal  affection 
of  their  contemporaries.  Least  of  all  do 
posthumous  gifts  arouse  this  sentiment. 
Peter  Cooper,  above  all  other  claims  to  re- 
nown and  gratitude,  identified  himself  with 
his  philanthropy,  and  was  known  where  he 
was  loved. 

"  Who  gives  himself  with  his  gift,  feeds  three  : 
Himself,  his  hungering  neighbor,  and  Me ! ' ' 


flT&e  Btoettfibe  $re# 

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